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How to Make Friends With The Dark by Kathleen Glasgow; Narrated by Jorjeana Marie
Delacorte Press / Listening Library
Publication Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0735209169
It’s always just been Tiger and her single mom. But Tiger wants a bit more freedom and gets into a rare fight with her mother over a dress for a school dance, she speaks to her mother with anger like never before. Then she goes out with a boy she likes without permission. It’s right after kissing that boy for the first time that Tiger learns her mother has died of a brain aneurysm. How do you move on without the only parent you’ve ever known? How do you mourn when the last thing you said to your mother was you wanted her to leave you alone?
Tiger’s story is heartbreaking, and narrator Jorjeana Marie does an outstanding job of voicing her pain, confusion, anger, and fear as she works through her grief. Subtle variations in tone, pace, and volume do justice to an emotional story.
Readers who enjoyed Glasgow’s debut Girl in Pieces will find this story as compelling. So will those looking to explore the dimensions of grief and seek characters re-building their lives after loss, as in The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan, A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Coletti, Fire Song by Adam Garnet Jones and We Are Okay by Nina LaCour.
–Teka McCabe and Wendy Stephens