White as Silence, Red as Song

July 1, 2018
A love triangle made more complex because one of the geometric points is sick with leukemia.Leo loves Beatrice. He loves her even though he's never actually spoken to her, even though she never answers his text messages. When he learns from his friend Silvia that Beatrice has leukemia, his life erupts in a chaos of emotion. One good thing to come out of his grief is that he donates blood. He also writes her a letter expressing his emotions, but on his way to deliver it he gets into an accident on his scooter and winds up in the hospital. Will he ever make his feelings for her known? Or will he see the stoic girl standing by his side supporting him as a friend in a more romantic light? Translated from the Italian, this book tends toward the repetitive and esoteric. Dialogue feels stilted and off-key, often marred by an overabundance of exclamation points and lines that don't reflect how teenagers naturally speak: " 'We've got to put those losers to shame!' I beam with delight. What would school be like without the soccer tournament?" The sluggish plot relies on the dry discourse of characters who spend a lot of time pondering their unlucky situations.A book about young people dealing with cancer that never moves beyond illness as a mechanism for self-discovery. (Fiction. 12-15)

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August 1, 2018
Grades 9-12 Sixteen-year-old Leo only knows one thing for sure: he loves Beatrice, just a grade above him but completely untouchable. The thought of any kind of relationship between them exists simply as a dream. When a new substitute teacher asks Leo to consider his dreams, he contemplates aspiring beyond Beatrice for the first time. But when he learns she's been diagnosed with leukemia, all he wants to do with his present is make sure she'll have a future. This is a beautifully written meditation on the importance of dreams and the power of every kind of love?first, unrequited, and lifelong. Leo's literally colorful worldview, seeing things in shades of white and red, grounds the narrative, which often twists and turns around larger-than-life myths and philosophy. D'Avenia has crafted a truly unconventional and honest teen voice, easily moving from the banality of PlayStation battles to the profundity of true love. Translated from the Italian, this affecting debut is a sweet love story unafraid to tackle big questions.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)