Forever Changes by Brendan Halpin

• ISBN: 978-0374324360
• Plot summary: Brianna is 18 and has the whole world ahead of her--senior year, and good enough grades to get into any good school she wants. But Brianna can't get excited about any of that. After living her whole life with cystic fibrosis and having an intense battle with it over the summer, Brianna doesn't think she'll have much longer to look forward to such things. While she spends her days fretting over what will happen if she dies, she takes solace in the math she knows so well and in the conversations she has with her teacher, Mr. Eccles, who too feels that the end is near. With the help of her dad and Mr. Eccles, she decides to put the illness behind her and just try to make the best of her senior year. Brianna learns to enjoy her friends and make the most of the time she has.
• Critical evaluation: Watching Brianna wrestle with mortality before she's even had the change to live much of her life is heartbreaking. Instead of celebrating her final year of high school and revelling in her acceptance to MIT, Brianna lays up at night thinking about what she has to leave behind and the friend she wishes she could confide in has already died of the same disease. Even though she has a feeling she won't make it, Brianna continues to follow her father's dreams for her by applying to college and partaking in average teenage activities--gossiping with her girlfriends about boys and drinking beer at parties. Halpin does an excellent job of conveying the types of stresses young people experience, and how Brianna's stress is amplified by her terminal illness.
• Reader's annotation: Brianna is stressed by normal teenager problems, and then some.
• About the author: Brendan Halpin used to be a high school English teacher before he became a full-time writer. He now lives in Boston.
• Genre: Fiction
• Curriculum ties, if any: None
• Booktalking ideas:
• What would you do if you knew you wouldn't live past your senior year of high school?
• Are there any subjects at school that you feel connected to like Brianna feels about math?
• Reading level/interest age: 15+
• Challenge issues: Death, underage drinking
• Why was this item included? This story was recommended by my teenage sister.