YA review: Thousand Words by Jennifer Brown
Ashleigh, a high school sophomore, is upset that Kaleb, her baseball-playing senior boyfriend, wants to spend more time with his team than with her. She's worried that Kaleb will forget her when he goes off to college in a few weeks. At the huge end-of-summer pool party, a friend makes an outrageous suggestion for how Ashleigh can make sure Kaleb remembers her. On the spur of the moment, Ashleigh strips naked in the bathroom and sexts a naked picture of herself in a risque pose to Kaleb. But when their already rocky relationship ends badly soon after, suddenly everyone in town has a copy of the photo-- some with Ashleigh's name and number attached. Worse, Ashleigh's dad is the school superintendent and her mom is a preschool teacher, and both of them immediately feel the impact of Ashleigh's impromptu decision.
Author Jennifer Brown (Hate List, Bitter End) has crafted an important novel about choices and consequences. Ashleigh is a compassionate character whose lapse in judgment has far reaching impacts: some members of the school board want her dad fired, Kaleb is facing child pornography charges, and Ashleigh puts in sixty hours of community service to create posters about the dangers of sexting. The promotional campaign accompanying the book's release shows that nearly one in five twelve to seventeen year olds have sent or received a nude photo, and many of those have forwarded the photo to more than three people. Jennifer Brown has broached a sensitive topic without moralizing, and allows readers a cautionary tale about what could happen to themselves or their friends.
While Ashleigh is judged by nearly everyone around her, author Jennifer Brown allows readers to make their own decisions about the explosive fallout of what happened. As Ashleigh comes to realize, a picture tells a thousand words, but not the whole story. This is an important novel for middle school and high school students to read, but some of the situations might be a little more mature than middle school librarians would care to have on their shelves.
Author Jennifer Brown (Hate List, Bitter End) has crafted an important novel about choices and consequences. Ashleigh is a compassionate character whose lapse in judgment has far reaching impacts: some members of the school board want her dad fired, Kaleb is facing child pornography charges, and Ashleigh puts in sixty hours of community service to create posters about the dangers of sexting. The promotional campaign accompanying the book's release shows that nearly one in five twelve to seventeen year olds have sent or received a nude photo, and many of those have forwarded the photo to more than three people. Jennifer Brown has broached a sensitive topic without moralizing, and allows readers a cautionary tale about what could happen to themselves or their friends.
While Ashleigh is judged by nearly everyone around her, author Jennifer Brown allows readers to make their own decisions about the explosive fallout of what happened. As Ashleigh comes to realize, a picture tells a thousand words, but not the whole story. This is an important novel for middle school and high school students to read, but some of the situations might be a little more mature than middle school librarians would care to have on their shelves.
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