SORT OF FOREVER

From Warner (Ellie and the Bunheads, 1997, etc.), a story about best friends separated by illness, then death, when one of them is diagnosed with leukemia. Cady and Nana have been friends since they were babies, but as the story opens, on Nana’s 12th birthday, she has cancer and Cady, the timid one, is trying to figure out what to do. She visits Nana every day, even in the hospital, even when her friend comes home to die. Cady is angry and lonely, and doesn’t understand why her parents are concerned. Both sets of parents, the nurses, doctors, and hospice workers, fill this book with words: descriptions of cancer treatment; a fairly clinical delineation of how those with leukemia may get sicker and die; and some fairly straight talk about survivor anger and guilt, how the dying feel, what happens to daily life when a loved one is dying. The information ultimately overwhelms the story: The best friends are described rather than felt, less vividly realized than Cady’s brother Russell, five, who is terrified that his sister will die, just as his pet turtle did. This is more bibliotherapeutic than story; much richer and more harrowing—although with older protagonists and for older readers—is Davida Wills Hurwin’s A Time for Dancing (1995). (Fiction. 9-12)