A Public Plea

Dear friends and strangers,

Last week my family found out that my mom has Invasive Lobular Carcinoma (ILC), a rare form of breast cancer. For all that cancer is becoming so widespread as to be a normal fact of life, you never really think that it will personally affect you until it actually does. That's how I felt about my mom's diagnosis. She is too young, and too youthful to have cancer. But in a little over a week she's going in for a double mastectomy and she'll start treatment soon after that.

For a couple years, I'd been thinking about doing the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. It's a crazy hard commitment--almost 40 miles over the course of two days. I've done charity walks before, but nothing past 10 miles. And in addition to the grueling physical demands, each walker has to raise at least $1,800 before they let her "out the gate," so to speak.

Thankfully, I won't be walking alone. My little sister is coming all the way out from New York to walk with me. Together we will help modern medicine get $3,600 closer to beating this terrible disease. We're walking for my mom, of course, but also for both of our grandmothers and several close friends of the family who have either survived or become victims of breast cancer.

If you'd like to support our cause by joining our team, you can register at www.avonwalk.org. If you'd like to donate money, you can go here. Any little bit is appreciated, even if it's thoughts and prayers for my mother. She is a strong woman and I know she'll beat her cancer in record time. All the same, we rely on the support of those around us to carry us through sometimes.

Thank you. I am blessed with a life full of amazing people, and you are one of them.

jake

The Sky is Everywhere

The Sky is Everywhere
by Jandy Nelson
Young Adult Fiction
Pub date 3/9/10

I don't have time to write a book review. I really don't. However, I also didn't have time to start a book last night, lay awake until all hours reading it, wake up, devour it during my commute, read a few pages during recess and lunch, and finish it as soon as I got home, pushing a huge assessment and lesson plans to the wayside.

But I did all of those things.

The book is called The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, and if you are a human being (or similar) you should read it. It comes out tomorrow.

Fans of Sarah Dessen, Susane Colasanti, Stephenie Meyer, Maureen Johnson, John Green, and/or Sara Zarr will love this book. Fans of the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, clarinets, France, roses, Bea Arthur or other tall zany old women, California, boys, and/or poetry will love this book. It will make you laugh (out loud, on page 2), it will make you cry (very shortly thereafter), and it will make you shake your head and wonder WHAT ON EARTH the characters are smoking to make them so awesome and weird. (Unless you live in Berkeley. Then you might understand.)

The Sky is Everywhere is about an unorthodox family reeling from the death of one of its members. Lennie--named after John Lennon--has lost her older sister and best friend, Bailey. A clarinetist, poet, and self-acknowledged nerd, Lennie doesn't know who she is without her vibrant sister. Even the Lennie plant, which has always reflected Lennie's emotional state, seems to be dying. With the help of Bailey's self-destructive boyfriend, their pothead Uncle Big, their artist grandmother, and the new boy in town, Lennie begins to find herself. But she makes a pretty big mess along the way.

I experienced all the extremes of emotion in the pages of this book. It's been a long time since a book has taken me for a ride like this one did.