Review: Echo's Sister

Echo's Sister by Paul Mosier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

El has high expectations for her seventh-grade-year; she transferred to a private school for the arts, and by the end of her first day there, she thinks it will be her best year ever. When her dad shows up at the school to walk her home, she knows something is terribly wrong. El's dad breaks the terrible news: her little sister, Echo, has a cancerous tumor in her mouth. Echo's cancer suddenly defines El's family. In El's mind, people only see her as the older sister of the girl with cancer. It seems that everything is about Echo. No more tennis for El. No more being honest with her best friend. Possibly no more private school. Just when El is beginning to lose hope, her friends, both new and old, come together to show her they are supporting Echo and El's family every step of the way.

I'm not going to lie; this book is sad. Reading about a kid with cancer is always difficult, but I was surprised by which narrative brought the most tears to my eyes. El thinks that her classmate Sydney despises her, so in turn, El doesn't like Sydney. When Sydney reads aloud an English assignment to her class, El realizes that Sydney is nothing like she thought she was. This honest and emotionally-vulnerable scene gutted me. For those of you who are old enough to have seen the movie, 10 Things I Hate about You, remember how gut-wrenching it was when Julia Styles' character read aloud a poem about Heath Ledger's character? Yeah, it's a lot like that.

If you have a student who asks for a book that will make them cry (because kids ask me that all the time), suggest Echo's Sister by Paul Mosier.

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