This is What I Did:
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Imagine if you had witnessed something horrific.
Imagine if it had happened to your friend.
And imagine if you hadn't done anything to help.
That's what it's like to be Logan, an utterly frank, slightly awkward, and extremely loveable outcast enmeshed in a mysterious psychological drama. This story allows readers to piece together the sequence of events that has changed his life and changed his perspective on what it means to be a good friend and what it means to be a good person.
This is What I Did: is a powerful read with clever touches, such as palindrome notes, strewn throughout the story and incorporated into the unique design of the book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Part staccato prose, part transcript, this haunting first novel will grip readers right from the start. Fragmented scenes re-create, with grim authenticity, the almost claustrophobic perspective of the eighth-grade narrator, Logan, as he struggles to come to terms with his role in a despicable crime. "A year ago I was fine. That's when there was nothing wrong," Logan says early on. In relaying the action chiefly through Logan's terse observations and through script-like reproductions of dialogue, Ellis never veers from Logan's point of view. In this way, she infuses the narrative with his guilt over what happened, the details of which are revealed only in a climactic finale. At the same time, the narrator's frustration does not become the audience's, thanks to Ellis's skill in dramatizing his vulnerability. Readers will recognize themselves in Logan's difficulty overcoming his shame, even if the scale of his experiences is larger than their own, and sympathy as well as curiosity about his circumstances will drive them forward. Logan's progress is slow but realistically so and brings with it an almost cathartic relief for the audience. Plaudits go to the art department, too: a particularly attractive book design incorporates small drawings between each segment of text. Ages 12-up.