Friday Memes: Falling Over Sideways by Jordan Sonnenblick

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader and Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

Falling Over Sideways by Jordan Sonnenblick. 262 p. Scholastic Press/ Scholastic Inc., September 27, 2016. 9780545863261.

Publisher synopsis: It's not easy being Claire. (Really.)

Claire's life is a joke . . . but she's not laughing. While her friends seem to be leaping forward, she's dancing in the same place. The mean girls at school are living up to their mean name, and there's a boy, Ryder, who's just as bad, if not worse. And at home, nobody's really listening to her -- if anything, they seem to be more in on the joke than she is.

Then into all of this (not-very-funny-to-Claire) comedy comes something intense and tragic -- while her dad is talking to her at the kitchen table, he falls over with a medical emergency. Suddenly the joke has become very serious -- and the only way Claire, her family, and her friends are going to get through it is if they can find a way to make it funny again.

First Line: June 15
I'm waiting in the wings, watching all the fathers dancing onstage. Well, all the fathers except mine.

Page 56: I glanced back at my father, who now had an IV line hanging down into each arm, a bunch of wires attached to his chest, and a green line spiking up and down crazily on a monitor screen next to his head. his eyes were open, staring straight up, as though he couldn't see or understand any of it.

How much time did he have left?

And how much brain?


It's no secret that I adore this author and so do my students. I did something very rare this week. I booktalked a book that I hadn't yet finished - Falling Over Sideways. I was that sure of it. There's already a waiting list as long as my arm!