Stahler, David.
DOPPELGANGER
New York : EOS, 2006
IL YA
ISBN 0060872322

(2 booktalks)

Have you heard the legend of the doppelganger? It’s a creature who looks just like you. In some stories, if you see one, it means you’re going to die. In other stories, it’s a shape-changer. You won’t know until it’s too late that the person you’re talking to is really a monster who will kill you and steal your shape—then move into your home with your family and steal your life.

Chris is a tough guy. A jock. A fighter. But when he beats up the wrong homeless guy, his life is over: he took on a doppelganger. Maybe you think Chris got what he deserved. But did the monster? As it takes over Chris’ live it discovers that some human beings act like monsters—like parents who abuse their kids.

As the doppelganger Chris begins to sink into Chris’ old life, he’s tempted by the opportunity to change things, make things different—maybe better. When the human beings are monsters, can the monster become a human being?
(Book talk by Kirsten Edwards, King County Library System for the Evergreen YA Book Award, 2009)

Booktalk #2

Doppleganger: a ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its fleshly counterpart. 

What teenage boy doesn't feel uncomfortable in his own skin? Who hasn't wished he could wake up as the high-school football hero, dating the prom queen? Our hero (who goes nameless throughout the majority of the story) suffers from this insecurity more than most: He's a doppelganger, born to kill humans and then take on his victim's persona for a period of time before moving on to the next life. Pushed out of his isolated childhood refuge by an uncaring, but true to nature, mother, he takes his first plunge into the world of humans, not wanting to live the life he's been prepared for, but pushed into it by young bullies. All of a sudden, he is the football hero (if only he could figure out how to play the game) and falling in love with the most beautiful girl at Bakerville High. Things should have been great, but it doesn't take long for him to realize that walking in someone else's skin doesn't mean an easy life, because everyone, even football heroes, has problems.  (Mary M. Silgals, Trident Academy, for South Carolina Young Adult Book Awards, 2008-2009)