Sunday, December 30, 2007

Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss


Izzy Miller is your normal fifteen year-old, until she discovers swollen glands on her throat. After a visit to the doctor, she is sent to the hospital for x-rays. She’s not worried about anything being really wrong with her until the doctor calls and says she has to go to Children’s Hospital right away. Izzy has lymphoma and with those words her life changes.

Once at the hospital, things happen frighteningly fast. Amy Koss does a wonderful job portraying the confusion both Izzy and her parents feel as information and test results are thrown at them. Although she is fifteen and by most accounts a young adult, this is just too much for her to take in. The only decision she gets to make is whether or not to get a PICC line, and I’m not sure that was truly an informed decision. As time goes by, she gets chemotherapy treatments and goes through all of the side effects that hit chemotherapy patients.

For the past nine months, I’ve been tutoring a young girl with cancer, and I approached this book with some trepidation. Would Izzy’s experiences feel too close after seeing my student under many months of truly grueling chemotherapy? Because I had a real-life person to compare Izzy’s experiences to, I can say that Koss was spot-on in what going through chemotherapy is like. The mouth sores (and now I understand why mouth sores are so common), the hair loss, the nausea, the failure of the anti-nausea medications – all of these were experienced by my student in the past few months.

There is so much that is good to this book. The only thing I can think of that might seem negative is that the ending seemed rushed, and yet if Koss had extended it, what could she have added? The routine of going to the hospital to get chemotherapy, feeling awful for days, and finally getting to feel better just before the next round of chemotherapy is due is just that – routine. The book could have easily gotten boring if Koss had gone on and on with Izzy’s treatment.

I also like the fact that there is no doubt that Izzy is going to survive her cancer (the cover blurb says so). This isn’t one of the millions of books in which the teenage character fights valiantly and then looses the battle with cancer – this is a book in which something bad happens to someone and she learns how to handle it and work through it. For those thousands of children diagnosed with cancer who go through the hell of treatments and come away cured, this book is perfect.

When I was young, I loved the book Something for Joey, the story of John Cappelletti’s brother Joey who died of leukemia. As I recall, there was never much hope that Joey could survive his cancer. Fortunately, today cancer is often cured and we need to recognize and celebrate the advances that have been made. Side Effects does that.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

awesome book!

Anonymous said...

This book is veryyy good!!

Little Pink Punk said...

this was an amazing book!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
i loved it

Anonymous said...

i'm on chapter 6 so far i like it

Anonymous said...

This book is so sad! But it is really good I would definitley suggest a lot of other people read this too!

Anonymous said...

Loved this book!! My friend won her battle with cancer!! Side Effects really touched me.

Anonymous said...

This is a really great book so far! I picked it up at the public library in the middle school section (cuz im in m.s.) and thought it looked kinda weird.. but i read the back and the intro and liked it. I recommend this book to peepz that don't mind the swearing> ;)

Anonymous said...

I loved this book and have to do a blog on it myself. I am in middle school and I myself know someone who battled cancer at a young age, but beat it.

Anonymous said...

I had got this book from my school Libary, I was half way done with the book.. But someone took it! Ive been trying to find look for this book again but I can't find it. I really love this book! Its one of my favorite books altough I dint read it all, I still LOVE this book! Good Job on making the book!

Anonymous said...

*loses you're a librarian it's simple