2) Crank

Hopkins, Ellen. Crank. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004

Annotation: Good girl gone confused. In Reno, Nevada two girls are living in one body: Kristina the well-mannered innocent, and Bree, her more carefree alter-ego. While exploring a new modern life of rebellion, sex, and expectations they meet 'The Monster,' which threatens to unravel everything.

Justification for Rejection: Crank is an undoubtably important young adult novel about the risks of Meth abuse, and the challenge of fitting a new identity into an old one. However, the novel ends up feeling disjointed at times as the verse structure often does not match the tone of the plot.

Kristina's story starts when she is sent to visit her estranged father in Albuquerque and meets her first boyfriend - Adam. The plot advances very quickly as she goes from being an inexperienced wallflower, to being hooked on 'crank' and experimenting with sex - all in the course of the first chapter. The literary device used to accomplish this tradition is Kristina's suppressed alter-ego Bree, who acts without fear our regret (how many young girls wise they could act). But the dynamic between these to personalities is depicted in such black and white terms that it never quite feels fully realized.

The novel is written almost entirely in free verse, with the structure getting more abstracted when Meth is being used in the story. For describing drug use, this vehicle works masterfully - it is a truly vivid depiction of how destructive drug use can be on the mind. Unfortunately, the verse structure is not nearly as effective when Kristina is more sober minded and in some ways makes the drug-affected portions more interesting to the reader.

Hopkins does do a particularly sensitive job of showing a young woman coming to terms with her sexuality; the fear, lust, and the judgments associated with sex are heartbreaking and timeless. The issue of drug use, however, often comes across sounding more like a public service warning. Even with the excellent verse describing the addiction, it's hard to imagine how teens wouldn't see through this and feel a little lectured to.

Hopkins wrote Crank in response to her own daughter's drug use, and in many ways the novel might be more effective for parents than for teens. But it's for that reason that I cannot nominate Crank.

Genre: Printz, Poetry or Verse Novel, Realistic/Edgy/Problem Novel