Edge Columnist/ Anna Tosun
Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick published in 2004 is about a 13-year-old whose life is turned upside down when his five-year-old brother, Jeffrey, is diagnosed with leukaemia.
Before his brother’s diagnosis, Steven is a wisecracking grade 8 attempting to navigate the trials of early adolescence. He is an enthusiastic and talented drummer and has a crush on schoolmate Renee Albert.
However, Steven’s life changes forever when one morning, Jeffrey falls off a stool and hits his head on the kitchen counter. When Jeffrey’s nose starts to bleed more than usual, his mother rushes him to the emergency room. Steven worries all day that he will get in trouble for letting his brother fall, but when he gets home his parents give him far more disturbing news: Jeffrey has been diagnosed with ALL, acute lymphatic leukemia, and needs to be taken to the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia to begin chemotherapy as soon as possible.
This book is inexplicably unique. Steven’s story really got me and I really recommend this book. This book makes you happy and sad at the same time by making you fall in love with the characters. The theme of the book is love, because without love from his friends and family, Steven, the main character wouldn’t have survived the whole ordeal with his school work and his little brother’s cancer.
I recommend this book to people who enjoy a book with deep meaning but also some romance and humor. It is also a good book to read for high school students because the book shows a lot of changes in Steven‘s life that only made him change because circumstances in his life changed from one second to another.
