Johnson, Angela. The First Part Last. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003.
Annotation: Faced with news of his girlfriend's pregnancy on his sixteenth birthday, Bobby shares the emotional ups and downs of going through a teen pregnancy and now raising his daughter, Feather.
Justification for Nomination: This book is unique. There are plenty of books detailing the female side of the story of a teen pregnancy, but this book looks entirely at the male perspective. I enjoyed that this book painted a positive but realistic perspective on Bobby's position.
The relationship Bobby has with his daughter Feather is shown as positive, which I think it is. His daughter needs him, and he works so hard to take the best care of her he knows how.
Johnson also shows the realistic side of Bobby's struggles, though. He struggles to find child care, is torn between his daughter and his friends, and is scared about what his parents will think of him.
One thing I found odd was that you didn't hear anything about Nia in the beginning. In reality, I think Bobby would have been more torn up and upset about losing Nia, and that should have been a bigger part of the story. Maybe he was able to just focus on Feather, but he still would have been grieving.
I think this book was well written. The chapters jump from "then" and "now". The "then" is set during Nia's pregnancy, and the "now" is Bobby at home with Feather. It keeps you wanting to read, because you never have the full story until the end.
Genre: Printz
1 comment:
I just finished reading this book too, and as you said, it keeps you reading because you do not know what happened to Nia till the end. I tried to keep that in suspense in my blog too ;-) Mine was also in large print format and found it to be a very easy read, and very enjoyable, I could not put it down once I started.
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