Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Freshman, Clay Jensen, just received seven audio cassettes through the mail. He has no idea who sent them since it has no return address. Each cassette has a number on each side, all the way up to thirteen. He pops in the first cassette and hears Hannah Baker's voice. He is surprised and confused since Hannah committed suicide two weeks ago. She explains that each side of the cassette will give a reason to why she killed herself. On each side she mentions a person and Clay is one of them. She mentions that their are rules to follow once they receive that cassettes. Rule one: They need to listen. Rule two: he has to pass it on to whoever is next on the cassettes. He listens to the cassettes: it is a chronology on how her life started going in a downward spiral that she was not able to control. He follows a map going to each place that she mentions on the cassettes. His name appears on cassette number nine. He realizes his part in her suicide is that he had walked away from her when she needed him most. Even though she was the one that was pushing him away, he did not try hard enough to stay with her. As he listens to her last cassette, he realizes that by then she had already given up on herself. In the end, Clay reaches out to Skye Miller, a loner, who may need someone to talk to just like Hannah did once. This is a powerful story about how a teenager was not able to pick herself up and not stand up to those that were causing her harm. She let her world collapse around her even though their were people that cared for her and would have helped her if she would have let them. I would highly recommend this book to upper grade students and to reluctant readers. The book could be used in a book talk to open up the topic of suicide, how one should never give up, and how you treat other people can have a "snowball affect."
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