{"id":36699,"date":"2015-01-04T10:02:36","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T15:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=36699"},"modified":"2015-01-04T10:12:40","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T15:12:40","slug":"noggin-by-john-corey-whaley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/noggin-by-john-corey-whaley\/","title":{"rendered":"Noggin by John Corey Whaley"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Noggin<\/a>John Corey Whaley, who was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature<\/a>, shares the same first name with the ever-popular, mega-bestselling author John Green<\/a>. Perhaps I might be delusional here, but\u00a0Noggin<\/em> feels like it could be some alternate-universe\u00a0sequel to\u00a0Green’s\u00a0The Fault in Our Stars<\/em><\/a>, with quite the fantastical twist\u00a0\u2013 imagine 16-year-old Hazel who succumbed to cancer in Stars<\/em>\u00a0coming back five years later, only to find the ever-devoted, once-in-a-lifetime perfect soulmate\u00a0Gus having somehow moved on and involved with someone else. There you have the basic premise here in Noggin<\/em>\u00a0…<\/p>\n

Five years after he died of the big C, Travis wakes up in\u00a0someone else’s body. His ‘noggin,’ which was cryogenically preserved, has now been reattached to a skateboarder’s healthy physique that was\u00a0donated after the original owner\u00a0died\u00a0to a\u00a0brain tumor. The reborn Travis \u2013 the second person to ever cheat\u00a0death\u00a0\u2013 wakes up still 16 years old, and\u00a0about to repeat sophomore year given all the school he missed while he was dying.<\/p>\n

Although Travis has\u00a0stayed basically the same\u00a0\u2013 at least in his head\u00a0\u2013 everyone else went on with their lives. His parents saved his ashes in an urn now relegated to\u00a0the back of a closet. His best friend Kyle is 21 with a little sister who matured into\u00a0the\u00a017-year-old\u00a0object of every teenage boy’s fantasy. Worst of all, his girlfriend Cate \u2013 to whom he promised on his deathbed that he would somehow return no matter what because\u00a0theirs was an epic love not unlike Hazel\u00a0and Gus’\u00a0\u2013\u00a0is engaged to some random dude\u00a0and shows\u00a0no interest in seeing Travis\u00a0again. What’s a reborn teenager to do without the love of his life?<\/p>\n

Whaley captures the unpredictability of teenagerhood (Kirby Heyborne is\u00a0his supremely reliable audible narrator) with quite the clever\u00a0schtick\u00a0at the end of each chapter into the next: the ending phrase of\u00a0one chapter begins the next with the exact words, which can go smoothly or jarringly, just like teenage interactions. Sometimes the transition is an easy continuation \u2013 “‘Welcome back, Travis Coates'” concludes and\u00a0opens Chapter One and Chapter Two; other times an unexpected 180-degree opposite turnaround happens with the same words\u00a0\u2013 “There was no doubt in my mind,” in Chapter Eighteen becomes “Doubt in my mind” with a flip\u00a0of a page in Chapter Nineteen. Play close attention for a delightful little meta-narrative just in these transitions.<\/p>\n

Medical miracle that he is, Travis\u00a0is the world’s only boy to turn 17 on his 22nd birthday. Of course, he\u00a0struggles with where he fits in. Yes, he feels left behind. But somehow, he’ll need\u00a0to figure out who the old Travis is in his sorta-familiar but still way-too-new-world … after all, he’s the kid “who died but isn’t dead anymore …”<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Middle Grade, Young Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Corey Whaley, who was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, shares the same first name with the ever-popular, mega-bestselling author John Green. Perhaps I might be delusional here, but\u00a0Noggin feels like it could be some alternate-universe\u00a0sequel to\u00a0Green’s\u00a0The Fault…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,6,30,60,31],"tags":[6608,58,75,10,11,123,6116,1600,13,6115,39,35],"class_list":["post-36699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio","category-fiction","category-middle-grade-readers","category-nonethnic-specific","category-young-adult-readers","tag-bookdragon","tag-coming-of-age","tag-death","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-illness","tag-john-corey-whaley","tag-kirby-heyborne","tag-love","tag-noggin","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-speculative-fantasy"],"yoast_head":"\nNoggin by John Corey Whaley - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/noggin-by-john-corey-whaley\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Noggin by John Corey Whaley - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Corey Whaley, who was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, shares the same first name with the ever-popular, mega-bestselling author John Green. 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