Elsewhere / Gabrielle Zevin.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Is it possible to grow up while getting younger?

Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It's quiet and peaceful. You can't get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere's museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe's psychiatric practice. nbsp; Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver's license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she's dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn't want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward? This moving, often funny book about grief, death, and loss will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned. nbsp; Elsewhere is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

From Elsewhere "It can be particularly difficult for young people to realize they are dead," Aldous says. "Why is that?" "Young people tend to think they're immortal. Many of them can't conceive of themselves as dead, Elizabeth." Aldous proceeds to go through all the things Liz would have to do in the next several months. Dying seems to entail a great deal more work than Liz initially thought. In a way, dying isn't that different from school. "Have you put any thought into an avocation?" Aldous asks her. Liz shrugs. "Not really. I didn't really have a job on Earth, because I was still in school.' "Oh no no no," Aldous says, "an avocation is not a job. A job has to do with prestige! Money! An avocation is something a person does to make their soul complete." Liz rolls her eyes. "I see by your expression you don't believe me," Aldous says. "It appears I've got a fourteen-year-old cynic on my hands." "Fifteen," Liz corrects him. "Is there anything you particularly loved on Earth?" Liz shrugs. "Anything, anything at all?" "Animals, maybe something with animals or dogs," Liz says finally, thinking of her prized pug, Lucy, back on Earth. "Marvelous!" crows Aldous. "I'm sure I could find you something fabulous to do with dogs!" Excerpted from Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Even readers who have strong views on what happens after death may find themselves intrigued by the fascinating world of "Elsewhere," the place 15-year-old Liz ends up after she is killed in a bicycle accident. A surreal atmosphere permeates chapter one as Liz awakens on a ship (mostly occupied by elderly people), unaware of its destination. Her situation gradually comes into focus after she arrives at the island of Elsewhere and is greeted by her grandmother, who died before Liz was born. Liz learns that the aging process works differently in this land of the dead: instead of getting older, humans (and animals) grow younger. When they reach infancy, they are sent down the River to be reborn on Earth. In other ways, Elsewhere resembles the world Liz left behind; residents work at jobs (although here, everyone has a chance to pursue an "avocation... something a person does to make his or her soul complete"), celebrate holidays and form friendships. Liz also falls in love for the first time, while her grandmother (who has progressed back to her thirties) becomes engaged to a famous rock star; and readers will likely be intrigued by the "strictly forbidden" Well. Prudently skirting the issue of God's role in Elsewhere (when she asks about God, Liz is told simply "God's there in the same way He, She, or It was before to you. Nothing has changed"), Margarettown author Zevin, in her first novel for young people, bends the laws of physics and biology to create an intricately imagined world. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Gr 7-10-What happens when you die? Where do you go? What do you do? Zevin provides answers to these questions in this intriguing novel, centering on the death of Liz Hall, almost 16 years old and looking forward to all that lies ahead: learning to drive, helping her best friend prepare for the prom, going to college, falling in love. Killed in a hit-and-run accident, Liz struggles to understand what has happened to her, grief-stricken at all she has lost, and incapable of seeing the benefits of the Elsewhere in which she finds herself. Refusing to participate in this new life, Liz spends her time looking longingly down at the family and friends back on Earth who go on without her. But the new environment pulls her into its own rhythms. Liz meets the grandmother she never knew, makes friends, takes a job, and falls in love as she and the other inhabitants of Elsewhere age backward one year for each year that they are there. Zevin's third-person narrative calmly, but surely guides readers through the bumpy landscape of strongly delineated characters dealing with the most difficult issue that faces all of us. A quiet book that provides much to think about and discuss.-Sharon Grover, Arlington County Department of Libraries, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Narration from beyond the grave has been cropping up with some frequency in YA novels this year, including Chris Crutcher's The Sledding Hill 0 and Adele Griffin's Where I Want to Be0 (both 2005) . 0 But this example, Zevin's second novel and her first for the YA audience, is a work of powerful beauty that merits judgment independent of any larger trend. The setting is an elaborately conceived afterlife called Elsewhere, a distinctly secular island realm of surprising physical solidity (no cottony clouds or pearly gates here), where the dead exist much as they once did--except that no one dies or is born, and aging occurs in reverse, culminating when the departed are returned to Earth as infants to start the life cycle again. Having sailed into Elsewhere's port aboard a cruise ship populated by mostly elderly passengers, 15-year-old head-trauma victim Liz Hall does not go gently into Elsewhere's endless summer. She is despairing, intractable, sullen, and understandably furious: "You mean I'll never go to college or get married or get big boobs or live on my own or get my driver's license or fall in love?" She rejects her new existence, spending endless hours keeping tabs on surviving family and friends through magical coin-operated telescopes, and refusing to take the suggestions offered by a well-meaning Office of Acclimation. Eventually, though, she begins to listen. She takes a job counseling deceased pets, forges an unexpected romance with a young man struggling with heartbreaks, and finds simple joy in the awareness that "a life is a good story . . . even a crazy, backward life like hers." Periodic visits with an increasingly youthful Liz, concluding with her journey down the "River" to be reborn, bring the novel to a graceful, seamless close. Although the book may prove too philosophical for some, Zevin offers readers more than a gimmick-driven novel of ideas: the world of Elsewhere is too tangible for that. "A human's life is a beautiful mess," reflects Liz, and the observation is reinforced with strikingly conceived examples: a newly dead thirtysomething falls in love with Liz's grandmother, who is biologically similar in age but experientially generations older; fresh arrivals reunite with spouses long since departed, creating incongruous May-December marriages and awkward love triangles (as Liz experiences when her boyfriend's wife suddenly appears). At one poignant moment, four-year-old Liz loses the ability to read. The passage she attempts to decipher, which comes from Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting, 0 is another meditation on the march of time and change. Although Zevin's conception of the afterlife will inevitably ruffle many theological feathers, the comfort it offers readers grieving for lost loved ones, as well as the simple, thrilling satisfaction derived from its bold engagement with basic, provocative questions of human existence, will far outweigh any offense its metaphysical perspective might give. Far more than just a vehicle for a cosmology, this inventive novel slices right to the bone of human yearning, offering up an indelible vision of life and death as equally rich sides of the same coin. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2005 Booklist

Horn Book Review

(Middle School, High School) ""I'm getting younger? But it took me so long to get to fifteen!"" In her debut young adult novel, Zevin offers a strikingly original answer to the eternal question: what happens when we die? Lizzie Hall, almost sixteen, has everything to look forward to: getting her driver's license, going to college, falling in love. But all that changes when she's killed in a hit-and-run accident. After a dreamlike and disconcerting journey aboard the SS Nile, Lizzie arrives in Elsewhere, where her grandmother, who died before Lizzie was born, greets her at the dock. Peculiar? Lizzie thinks so, too. In Zevin's afterlife, ""everyone...ages backward from the day they died."" And when people become seven-day-old babies, they are sent back to Earth to begin a new life. Readers are on the same uneven ground as Lizzie as she struggles to adjust to her death and to the idea that -- as Lizzie Hall, at least -- she'll never reach adulthood. The often wry, always absorbing narrative sensitively portrays Lizzie's grief and anger at the loss of her old life and her slow and painful acceptance of her existence in Elsewhere. With an intriguing and well-developed premise, thoughtful characterization, and refreshing style, Zevin's poignant novel rewards readers with a view of death that celebrates the rich complexities of being alive. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.