California: North/Central

SCBWI CA North/Central, together with The Center for Teaching and Learning at CSU, Sacramento, bring you a FREE event featuring the talented author Jill Wolfson.

She will discuss her incredible young adult novel, Cold Hands, Warm Heart, published in 2009 by Henry Holt. The novel is a moving story of the families affected by organ donation.  Jill will share her background as a journalist, which helped her research and conduct interviews that empowered the finished novel.  Signed copies of her novels will be available for purchase.   

 

           

The social and psychological ramifications of organ transplantation on the lives of recipients and the family members of the recently deceased fuel the plot of this well-written novel. The lives of two teenage girls become literally connected after 14-year-old Amanda unexpectedly dies during a gymnastics meet, and Dani receives Amanda’s heart. Wolfson intersperses Dani’s account of how transplant technology influences her life with a third-person narrative that focuses on Amanda’s teenage brother, and adds a dollop of letters from the recipients of Amanda’s other organs (kidney, cornea, etc.). These three strands are compelling and give a full view of sibling loss, hospital friendship (and budding romance), and how donated organs can—and can’t—address recipients’ spectrum of needs. Dani; Amanda’s brother, Tyler; and Milo, a teen awaiting a second liver transplant after abusing the first in typically adolescent ways, all ring true. Showing teens confronting unexpected emotions in both themselves and others, this novel is sure to please fans of realistic but gentle teen romance or medical stories. Grades 8-10.