Mind's Eye

Mind's Eye by Paul Fleischman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Quick read as it's in a play format - without most of the set descriptions & stage directions. The main character, Courtney is not very likable, but neither was Pollyanna right after her accident, so I can cut her some slack. Overall, it was a good book about imagination & the value that literature can have for an inner, mental life that other forms of entertainment don't always provide enough substance for.

I would definitely recommend this book to teens who need to do a book report in a hurry. I'd also recommend it to young people who like the sort of tearjerker where the main character (probably) dies in the end because she had sex once & got HIV or fell in love with a boy who dies at the end, etc... because this book is sort of like the book that comes after that. There's a terrible accident & the girl gets paralyzed, but that's not what this book is about. This is about her first few months in the hospital doing physical therapy & slowly recovering a will to live. It's not a tearjerker, but it deals with a terrible calamity that's befallen a beautiful girl.


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Speak

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is a book for teens about a girl who has been raped and the circumstances surrounding her trauma and the year following as she struggles with reclaiming a place in her world. Largely a book of mental processes and flashbacks, the book tells its story well - bringing the reader into the main character's mind and lets teens experience this event and the start of the healing process from a safe place (outside of the situation). Speak is the Go Ask Alice of this generation (though never fear, there is no shortage of readers for G.A.A.). These books speak to what I like to think of as the "They've got it soooo much worse than I do" appeal factor. This also explains the incredible appeal of A Child Called It to this same audience. In my opinion, Speak is a much higher quality book, though it does not purport to be a true story because it's not so sensationalized and the moral of the story doesn't hit the reader over the head like a sledgehammer. Still, I think probably for a lot of girls (and perhaps a few guys who read this as a required book for school) when they find themselves drifting into a similar situation, they might be more likely to find a friend to take them home before anything happened - or not stick close to their friends so that none of them could be injured or taken advantage of in an inebriated state.

I'd highly recommend this to fans of V.C. Andrews and for people who like to read about other people coming through difficult circumstances (fans of A Child Called It, Go Ask Alice, Mr & Mrs Bo Jones, etc..). For everyone else, it's worthwhile as a teenager, but less impressive for an adult audience. For adults who like this kind of book, I'd recommend Sybil or Ghost Girl.