"If I Stay" by Gayle Forman
"My parents aren't here. They are not holding my hand, or cheering me on."
Author's Intro
Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist. She was born June 5, 1970 in Los Angeles, California, and she is an American young adult fiction author. Like Palacio, Forman currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family. She is married to Nick Forman, and together, they have two children: a biological daughter named Willa Forman and an adopted daughter from Ethiopia. Before writing her first novel, she worked as a feature writer for Seventeen Magazine. She also worked as a freelance writer writing for many major magazines such as Elle, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan.
Throughout her writing career, Forman has published many novels. For example, Just One Day, sisters in Sanity, Just One Year, You Can’t Get There From Here, Leave Me, I Have Lost My Way, Pour Your Heart Out, Dear Heartbreak, My True Love Gave to Me, and her most popular series: If I Stay are all popular books by Forman.
If I Stay is the first book in the collection. It is followed by Where She Went. The series is Forman's most popular work, and it has paved the way for her career as a successful author.
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Up until even recently, Forman has won many awards for her novels. Some of these awards include:
2015 RT Book Reviews—Top Pick
2009 New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Award—Children’s Literature
2010 Black-Eyed Susan Award—High School
2010 Georgia Peach Book Award for Teen Readers—Young Adult
2010 Indies Choice Book Award—Young Adult
2011 Goodreads Choice Award—Young Adult Fiction
2014 Kentucky Bluegrass Award—Grades 9-12
2016 Grand Canyon Reader Award-- Teen
2016 Young Reader’s Choice Award—Senior/Grades 10-12
2018 Kirkus Reviews
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Gayle Forman once stated in an interview that she doesn’t “set out to write YA. It just seems like she is drawn to stories about young people”. She thinks If I Stay is for everyone, and she loves the idea of tens reading this book and then handing it off to their parents.
To read more on an interview with Gayle Forman, you can click on the following link:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/1719/Gayle-Forman
Book Intro
If I Stay is an intense novel targeting young adults in high school that struggles with the decision of whether or not a young girl should live or die. On a snow day, Mia Hall, a cello prodigy hoping to soon attend Juilliard, along with her parents and brother, were going to visit family when they a car crashed into them. She is awakened to an out of body experience where she is instantly forced to see her dead mother and father’s cold bodies on the road. Her brother was not instantly killed in the crash, so she also spends her time with him during his critical hours. Her perfect family was no longer the same. If Mia were to wake up, she would be an orphan. If she were to die, she'd be leaving an entire unfinished life behind. Mia is also forced to make a decision about whether or not she should die alongside of her parents or if she should fight to stay alive in order to pursue her music career at her dream school, Julliard, her friendship with her best friend, Kim, and her love life with her boyfriend, Adam. Throughout her time outside of her body, Mia gets to go down both roads of whether or not she lives as well as getting to see how the accident is currently affecting those still alive around her. The readers get to travel down all possible roads with Mia on her journey to make this life changing decision, and this journey is one that no one will forget.
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This dramatic, romantic teen novel was turned into a film in 2014 directed by R. J. Cutler. It was released in August and grossed $79 million.
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Awards and Recognition
"A beautiful novel" Los Angeles Times
"If I Stay throbs with love and tragedy" Sacramento Bee
"This book is a do-not-miss story of love, friendship, family, loss, control, and coping" Justine Magazine
"a poignant novel... reminiscent of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. Forman is a master at creating memorable characters and at tugging the heartstrings enough to keep us turning the pages as we sob our eyes out." Buffalo News
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Teaching Challenges
Profanity and Violence
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While most high school students have heard profanity and seen violence, this book gives many examples of both topics throughout. It isn’t necessary to teach the meanings of the profanity to these students, but I do believe it is important to address before the students begin to read. Teachers need to address the profanity before hand in order to create this safe space in the classroom. While reading can be done silently and independently, some reading will have to be done in the classroom. If students are too busy getting distracted by the words on the paper, they will not be able to focus on the overall message of what they are reading and studying.
Also, it is important to address the violence this book contains before students begin to read it. This might be a time to bring in the school’s counselor to help console the students. As teachers, we do not always know what our students have gone through or are going. Since the very beginning of this book begins with the violent deaths of Mia’s mother and father, this could easily trigger students that have lost a parent or family member of their own. You want the students to be prepared so that they are not taken off guard by such traumatic events.
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Decisions
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In order to make sure something gets done or something happens, we must make decisions to ensure those things we want and need to happen, happen. I think as teachers, it is important to reiterate to students the power that decisions have. Students need to be reminded that they have to make decisions constantly. They have to think about the consequences that decision have, and they need to be guided in making the right decisions. Students need to be able to hear from someone besides their parents or guardians about how to make decisions. This is very important for this book because we see Mia being forced to choose what she believes needs to do with her life. Should we end it? Should she continue on? Students need to know that they're at the age where their decisions are important.