Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall » (Reprint)

Wendy Mass is the author of the ALA Schneider Family Award winner A Mango-Shaped Space and Leap Day. Her most recent novel, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, was a Book Sense Pick. Wendy lives in Sparta, New Jersey with her husband and her twin daughter and son.

Tessa Reynolds is finishing up her junior year of high school. She's just had a humiliating experience at the prom, and she's constantly struggling with her weight and her perfectionist mother.

When she sees a dodgeball zooming toward her head in gym class, she doesn't bother to duck. As she falls to the gym floor, she floats up to what seems to be heaven while examining the scene beneath her. When she arrives, she finds that heaven looks a lot like the mall, where she's spent most of her free time over the years.

After initially rebelling at having to relive what are often painful memories, she slowly begins to gain a better perspective of her life, her friends, and her family. She sees the decisions she made, and now, with hindsight, she can learn from them. She is given the choice to return to her life, and she takes it, armed with a new self-esteem and big hopes for her future. After all, high school doesn't last forever.

Written in witty, accessible verse, this poetry novel will both move and entertain readers and make them reevaluate their own lives, too.

VOYA

Following a tragic dodgeball accident, Tessa finds herself wandering around the local mall. It was her favorite place, so she assumes that it is heaven now. She is led to the mall's lost and found and gets the chance to view her life through the lens of things that she has purchased, like a yellow cup, pencil box, bra, and prom dress. Each represents a chapter in her life-and in the book-that changes Tessa and often costs her a part of her self-respect, such as the yellow cups for the lemonade stand that she ran in grade school. Tessa was excited to earn money to donate for homeless cats. No one stopped at her booth, though, and her class voted to use the money that they earned to get new chairs for the auditorium. The prom dress made her feel beautiful, but it was ruined when her prom night ended in disaster. These disappointments slowly compound to make Tessa dislike herself and expect others to dislike her too. Looking back on them objectively, she is able to see herself as a regular person who is flawed but redeemable. Mass is the author of the heartwarming A Mango-Shaped Space (Little, Brown, 2003/VOYA April 2003) and Leap Day (2004/VOYA February 2004). Although this book is not as engrossing her earlier work or original as other life-after-death young adult books, such as Zevin's Elsewhere (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2005/VOYA October 2005) and Soto's Afterlife (Harcourt, 2003/VOYA February 2004), it is still an entertaining and thought-provoking story that teens will enjoy. The short, free-verse format might entice reluctant readers to pick up the book.