Breaking Up by Aimee Friedman and Illustrated by Chistine Norrie

1. Title: Breaking Up

2. Author: Aimee Friedman

3. Illustrator: Christine Norrie

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: Scholastic 2007

5. Genre: Teen Issues

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 10^th grade- onward

7. Students will like this book because it is very easy to read and the illustrations make the story line truly come alive. I also think they will like it because it deals with relationships both sexual and on a friendship level.

8. A summary:

Chloe, the main character, is going into her junior year of high school with her three best friends in the world. They all go to an arts school and they have been friends for years. Mackenzie, one of those friends, has become obsessed with becoming the most popular girl in the school and dating the most popular boy, except the most popular boy is dating the truly most popular girl, Nicola. She does sleep with the boy, but when Nicola finds out she takes her diary and makes copies of it and posts it throughout the school. During all of this the three other girls are dealing with a boyfriend who demands sex when she’s not ready, dealing with controlling parents, and Chloe is dealing with failing in love with a loser that she hides from everyone else. All of this comes together in one big fight that breaks the girls a part, which in the end they settle their differences and come back together again.

9. Personal Response.

Oddly, for a male, I really liked this book and read it cover to cover 191 pages in one sitting. It is interesting because the author does a great job of getting the reader to buy into the drama that is each girl’s life. Also, the antidotal pictures are hilarious because they are what we all feel when going through these types of events. I also enjoyed the book because it was a new format for me and I could see myself writing a novel like this someday.

10. Teaching ideas.

I would use this book to teach to my composition class because it fits the curriculum in that it shows a different form of writing and because it is simply a good book. I would teach this book as a back drop to our own small comic book that we would be writing during class. I would use sections of the book to point out ideas that they could use in their own writing. The final multimedia project would be a comic book and even a film of the students acting it out together.