| Booktalk
#1
Doug isn't a school athlete
or a popular student. He doesn't go out for theater. And he
spends a lot of time working on his model railroad. Andy is a popular
student, a great athlete and involved with school theater. The two
aren't what you would expect for best friends. But they live next
door to each other and have been best friends forever. Late at night,
they talk to each other through their windows. But things are just
not right somehow. As the days go by, we learn what it is.
Booktalk #2
Andy Morrow and I are best
friends. Best friends share everything, especially secrets.
I am Douglas MacArthur Hanson,
but Andy calls me Dougie.
I am 17 and go to Fairview
Central High. I am kind of shy, a lot different then Andy.
It doesn’t matter that we live
in completely different realities—that Andy is the quarterback of the football
team and stars in school plays while I spend most of my time working on
an HO train set I have in our basement. If you asked Andy to name his best
friend, he would say, “Dougie Hanson.”
I am pretty much invisible
except when I am with Andy.
Do I strike you as a little
obsessive? My parents and counselor think so.
But the truth is I am just
very focused. So focused I built a whole town around my train set. Right
now I am building a suspension bridge out of matchsticks.
Like I said, Andy and I share
a secret. We had some bad luck with fires when we were kids. There was
the tree house and the then the Tuttle Place.
But everything turned out
all right. I don’t see why everybody thinks my friendship with Andy is
such a problem. Dr. Ahlstrom says I need to forget Andy. But I can't. You
see we both made it out of that fire alive. That’s our secret. Andy is
alive and he is my best friend. No matter what, he will never leave me.
(Booktalk by Tom Reynolds,
Sno-Isle Regional Library System for
the Evergreen Young Adult Book award, 2007-2008)
Booktalk #3
Doug Hansen is a loner and
a geek. He is obsessed with his model train, and has been building a replica
of the Golden Gate Bridge for it for 3 years in his basement by carefully
scraping the phosphorus ends off of match sticks. He has used over 22 thousand
sticks, all precisely glued, neatly arranged, all done to scale. Doug's
one friend is his next door neighbor, Andy Morrow, popular actor and football
quarterback. Doug and Andy talk every evening from their bedroom windows
about the events of the day--
Or do they?
From early in the book, you
know that something bad happened in the past. Something really bad. Doug
admits he and Andy had some bad luck with fires when they were kids, but
they are more careful now. He really doesn't like to think about that time.
But--why do Doug's mother and his psychiatrist both think that Doug is
talking to himself when he is in his bedroom?
And, why is the book called
Invisible?
As Doug's life at school becomes
more unbearable as the book progresses, he retreats to what gives him comfort--his
train and the bridge, his friendship with Andy that his parents seem to
not want to hear about, and his fascination with fire. His repressed memory
of that bad time he and Andy had won't stay stuffed, and when it breaks
through, Doug's parents realize he must have help.
All aboard?
Get ready for a whole new train
ride: Invisible by Pete Hautman
(Booktalk by Kathy Caldwell,
Woodward Middle School for
the Evergreen Young Adult Book award, 2007-2008)
Booktalk #4
Seventeen-year-old Doug Hanson
could be described as obsessed. He is obsessed with building a model train
set with matchsticks, with watching and following the beautiful Melissa
Haverman, who calls him a worm, and with talking to his best friend Andy
Morrow, who is the exact opposite of Doug. Andy is his next-door neighbor,
and he is popular, athletic, and good-looking. Doug isn’t bothered by the
fact that Andy doesn’t talk to him at school, but only from the next-door
window at night. There are secrets in Doug’s life. Why is he obsessed with
matches? Why is a strange man living in Andy’s house? Why is Doug preoccupied
with initials and carvings? Why doesn’t he take his medication? Enter Doug’s
private world and learn what has put him in his living hell. (Prepared
by: Sally Hursey for SCASL
Young Adult Awards, 2008) |
