Taylor Before and After

by Jennie Englund, Camille Kellogg (Editor)

Overview

In journal entries alternating between two timelines—before and after a tragic accident—Jennie Englund's heartfelt coming-of-age story, Taylor Before and After follows the year that changes one girl’s life forever.

Before, Taylor Harper is finally popular, sitting with the cool kids at lunch, and maybe, just maybe, getting invited to the biggest, most exclusive party of the year.

After, no one talks to her.

Before, she’s friends with Brielle Branson, the coolest girl in school.

After, Brielle has become a bully, and Taylor’s her favorite target.

Before, home isn’t perfect, but at least her family is together.

After, Mom won’t get out of bed, Dad won’t stop yelling, and Eli...

Eli’s gone.

Through everything, Taylor has her notebook, a diary of the year that one fatal accident tears her life apart. In entries alternating between the first and second semester of her eighth-grade year, she navigates joy and grief, gain and loss, hope and depression.

How can Taylor pick up the pieces of what used to be her social life? How can her house ever feel like home again after everything that’s happened? And how can she move forward if she can’t stop looking back?

An Imprint Book

"Powerful... A resonant look at coming-of-age." —Kirkus Reviews

A Junior Library Guild Selection

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250763327
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	02/16/2021
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,112,325
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Jennie Englund began Taylor Before and After during her time as a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow in Hawaii. She lives in Oregon, where she works as a teacher. Taylor Before and After is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

"Taylor Before and After moves like a wave from tragedy to hope, from despair to resilience. Readers will find inspiration in this love letter to the healing power of the written word."
—Adrienne Kisner, author of Dear Rachel Maddow

"A powerful story charting the evolution of a life-shattering night and its aftermath... A resonant look at coming-of-age in a socially networked world." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

Taylor Before and After moves like a wave from tragedy to hope, from despair to resilience. Readers will find inspiration in this love letter to the healing power of the written word.”

author of Dear Rachel Maddow Adrienne Kisner

02/01/2020

Gr 4 Up—A story is told in journal entries that flash forward and back in time involving an unnamed tragedy. Taylor lives in Oahu. Transplanted from Oregon three years earlier thanks to her father's new job teaching at a college, Taylor's family has not found the move easy. Her mother, who experiences depressive episodes, now does not get out of bed. Taylor's brother, Eli, and her emotionally distant father are in conflict. Eli has discovered surfing and cuts class in order to find the perfect wave. Taylor has had trouble fitting in, but is happy when the seventh grade alpha female grants her entry into her circle of friends. The disjointed narrative in this compelling debut shifts between "before" to "after," and is appropriately disorienting. Readers slowly piece together what Taylor herself is barely able to articulate. Her dysfunctional home situation leaves Taylor with no mooring. Both parents are emotionally unavailable and her beloved brother has betrayed her. Taylor herself can't help but be affected by the fallout and makes some poor decisions. But she is resilient and introspective. VERDICT Readers will root for Taylor as they read her honest musings. Mild swearing and the sophisticated structure of this fascinating coming-of-age story make this better suited for a thoughtful upper middle grade reader.—Brenda Kahn, Tenakill Middle School, Closter, NJ

School Library Journal

2019-11-10
A Hawaii teen charts life before and after the catastrophe that's reshaped her world.

Three years ago, Taylor's family (presumed white) left Oregon for Oahu, where her mom's clinical depression and the friction between her dad and brother, Eli, a high school senior, have worsened. Eli skips school to hang with his surfing brahs and girlfriend, Stacy, partying, drinking, and driving to the North Shore to surf. Eighth grader Taylor escapes into social networking, fantasizing about a career in fashion. Thrillingly befriended by wealthy, stylish Brielle, whose manipulative ways are patterned on reality TV, Taylor allows Brielle to coax her into abandoning one friend and betraying another. Taylor's responses to classroom writing prompts—dating both before and after the catastrophe—comprise the text. Like Brielle, Taylor's turned winner-take-all competition into her life template. Triumphant outcomes are transmitted and amplified through social media, but so are humiliation and tragedy. Publicly scrutinized by indifferent strangers, they prove deeply isolating. If the shape of the plot's defining events at first seems withheld capriciously, the technique pays off in a powerful story charting the evolution of a life-shattering night and its aftermath. Oahu's dizzying contradictions, from shabby to glorious, and cultural events such as Bon dances are carefully rendered and, like the Hawaiian orthography, largely accurate. Though character names and actions convey Hawaii's uniquely mixed, multiethnic population, physical descriptions are disappointingly few.

A resonant look at coming-of-age in a socially networked world. (Fiction. 11-15)

Kirkus Reviews