Thursday, March 27, 2014

My Lurlene McDaniel Odyssey

Being at the middle school is so different from my experience at the elementary school.  For one thing, my days are not packed with classes so I have lots of time to dig in to the collection and weed, weed, weed!  

A lot of books had already been pulled off the shelves, 'archived' in the system and then boxed up and stored in closets, as I mentioned in my previous post.  I've been slowly moving those out and it's been kind of a treasure hunt because now and then, I'll open up a box and find something like this:
Or books like these:
The illustrations in that copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin would make your eyes bleed.

There's still lots to pull out of the cabinets but I haven't been able to leave the shelves alone.  There are books sitting on top of the bookshelves because there is no room for them and it makes me feel all  twitchy.  So I've been weeding the shelves at the same time and working those superfluous volumes back into their proper place.  

While doing this, I came across this book:
That's Six Months To Live, by Lurlene McDaniel.  The cover was badly faded and the pages were yellowed and the spine was crackly.  It was published in 1995 and was part of a series that follows the main character Dawn Rochelle through various ordeals involving cancer.  Two other books by this author were also on the shelf; Too Young to Die and One Last Wish.  It occurred to me that Lurlene McDaniel has a strange fascination with dying teenagers.  

Then I suddenly became fascinated with Lurlene McDaniel.  I decided to read a bit of Six Months to Live to get a feel of what the story was like.  I read the first few pages and decided this was a book that I would never, ever read.  I had a laugh about it then tossed it in the weed box and went on with my day.

Later that day, when I was at home, I thought about the tragic Ms. McDaniel again and wondered what else she'd written and if these were just stand out novels for her.  So I looked her up on Wikipedia and saw her bibliography which I strongly encourage you to go and do now.  

If you don't want to go down that rabbit hole, here is a sampling:

Mother, Please Don't Die
Why Did She Have to Die?
Baby Alicia Is Dying
Don't Die, My Love
If I Should Die Before I Wake
Mother, Help Me Live

Seems a little grim, eh?  It turns out she was inspired to write as a way to deal with her son being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when he was 3 years old.  

Going deeper into the rabbit hole, I went to Amazon.com and Goodreads.com and started reading the reviews of Six Months to Live.  I don't know what I was expecting but it turns out that people love this book.  Over and over, people wrote about how they'd read this book as an adolescent and it helped them through a rough time. People love Lurlene McDaniel's books.  

Every writer has a reader.

But the story doesn't end here.  Yesterday, I had a student come to the library and she asked me if I had any 'sad books.'  I asked a couple questions to find out what kind of sad books she wanted and she wanted something about someone dying.  Of course, Lurlene McDaniel popped right into my head but I'd already pulled those off the shelf. I quickly searched the catalog and found something that she found interesting.  Then I took her over to the box of discards and pulled out the 3 Lurlene McDaniel books and told her she could have them if she wanted them. 

She took Six Months to Live with her.

I hope she likes it.

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