Deadline

Crutcher, C. (2007). Deadline. New York: Greenwillow Books. 

Ben Wolf is 18 years old and a senior in high school.  He goes to get a physical and the doctor tells him he has a rare blood disorder and only has a year to live. He decides to forgo his treatments and not tell anyone that he is dying.  He wants to live life to the fullest.  He lives in a small town in Idaho and excels in track, but decides he wants to play football his last year. He has a really close relationship with his brother Cody, who plays football as well. The coach is like a second dad to him.   Before he passes, he wants to go out with Dallas, a smart, beautiful girl and he wants to learn as much as he can in school.  He loves to read nonfiction books and it frustrates him that his history teacher uses biased material to teach.  He frequently challenges his teacher Mr. Lambeer.  His goal is to get a street Malcolm X named in town.  Mr. Lambeer threatens to fail him, but he doesn’t care.  Ben becomes really close to Dallas and Rudy, the town drunk.  As the time progresses, it becomes for difficult to keep this secret everyone.  The only person he can talk to is Hey, Soos, who comes to talk to him when he is in dream state.  As he starts feeling the negative affects of his illness, he realizes it wrong to keep it from the people that love him.  He starts telling and they help him get through his final days.  The principal asks Ben to speak at graduation, but he doesn’t make it and his brother Cody reads the speech he wrote.  At the end, Dallas and Cody make plans for the future.  I think this book would be more age-appropriate for high school students and older because of the use of profanity is through-out the book.  I cried through-out the book. As a mother and teacher, it broke my heart that someone so young was living his last days.  I liked how the book used his death to help Ben accomplish his goals in life as well.  This book was inspiring, yet touching as he was making choices in his life for himself.  Deadline is a realistic fiction book.  One of the themes of this book is death.  Ben is facing that he only has a short time to live, the town drunk commits suicide, and a classmate at school dies in a car accident.  The setting is in a small town of 983 in Idaho.  Everyone knows everyone in this town. His school only as 93 students. The vocabulary used in this book is of a typical teenager. Slang, swearwords, and word abbreviations like “gimme” are used.  Ben made the choice he thought was best for his life and says, “When I took risks like this was my last chance and at the same time kept it in my head that my action have consequences not only for me but for every one I touched, forever, I made my best decision.” p.  312