Monday, October 20, 2008

Shift Jennifer Bradbury


Shift - Jennifer Bradbury If I had known this was going to be as good as it was, I would've read it months ago. I loved Shift, read it in one sitting. I knew it was about two high school graduates going on a cross country bike trip, but nobody told me about the mystery aspect or if they did I wasn't listening. Christopher (Chris) Collins just graduated and will be attending college in the fall. Instead of getting a minimum wage job he decides to bike cross country from West Virginia to Seattle with is best friend Winston (Win) Coggans. The novel opens with an FBI agent questioning Chris. The roadtrip has already taken place, Win never made it back. The chapters alternate between the present and the roadtrip. In the present Chris deals with beginnings of college life, being threatened by Win's influential and rich father, and coping with his feelings about Win's disappearance. Bradbury gives us a great feel for who these young men are with their family situations. When Collins tells his story to the FBI agent, its easy to see how the cross country trip changed both characters and challenged their lifelong friendship. Bradbury's writing is smooth , she doesn't try to do too much and in doing so succeeds in creating a character many teens will went to get to know. I will start recommending this a lot especially to boys. Though girls will love it as well its nice to have a coming of age story with a male protagonist that's apporiate for ages 12up.

Time to share

Chris and Win fight

Somehow, from the first moment he hit, me I knew this was different from all the other little contests. Those had just been for bragging rights. But now I didn't just want to win, I wanted to defeat Win. Friendly rivalry had been left behind on the road, or maybe this desire was something I'd had all along and just ignored. This time I was fighting to learn who was actually stronger-the better man. And I was willing to risk losing to find out who that was. By now we were on how feet, deadlocked, heads down, chests heaving, waiting for an opening.

Shift was picked as a 10 top Youth sports book by Booklist. You have to log in to view the list so I am just going to piggy back off of author James Preller's post.

No comments: