What About Will

What About Will

by Ellen Hopkins
What About Will

What About Will

by Ellen Hopkins

Hardcover

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Overview

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins comes a new heartbreakingly tender middle grade novel in verse about the bonds between two brothers and the love they share.

Twelve-year-old Trace Reynolds has always looked up to his brother, mostly because Will, who's five years older, has never looked down on him. It was Will who taught Trace to ride a bike, would watch sports on TV with him, and cheer him on at Little League. But when Will was knocked out cold during a football game, resulting in a brain injury—everything changed. Now, seventeen months later, their family is still living under the weight of "the incident," that left Will with a facial tic, depression, and an anger he cannot always control, culminating in their parents' divorce. Afraid of further fracturing his family, Trace begins to cover for Will who, struggling with addiction to pain medication, becomes someone Trace doesn’t recognize. But when the brother he loves so much becomes more and more withdrawn, and escalates to stealing money and ditching school, Trace realizes some secrets cannot be kept if we ever hope to heal.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780593108642
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date: 09/14/2021
Pages: 384
Sales rank: 1,139,971
Product dimensions: 5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.40(d)
Lexile: HL500L (what's this?)
Age Range: 10 - 13 Years

About the Author

About The Author
Ellen Hopkins is a poet, former journalist, and the award-winning author of twenty nonfiction books for young readers, fourteen bestselling young-adult novels (including The Crank Trilogy, Burned, Impulse, and Tricks series), and four novels for adult readers. This is her second middle-grade novel. Ellen lives with her extended family, two brilliant German shepherds, and a couple of ponds (not pounds) of koi in the eastern shadow of the Northern Nevada Sierra.


Read an Excerpt

My Big Brother
Always had a short fuse but now it’s permanently lit.
 
Okay, it was never hard to set Will off.
 
It used to be a game
I played, mostly just for kicks.
It was funny, watching the blood throb in his temples.
 
But sometimes,
when trouble was staring at me and I wanted to aim it in a different direction,
I’d rile Will up until he blew.
 
Then, when Mom or Dad started griping about my behavior,
I’d point at my brother,
all red-faced and cussing,
and ask, “What about Will?”
 
I never thought
I’d get sick of that question.

 
Check It Out
It’s been a long time since I’ve said it straight to my brother’s face,
but I love him, wicked bad temper and all.
 
We used to be best-
friend brothers.
 
Will’s seventeen, which makes him five years older, and I’ve always looked up to him.
 
Mostly because he never looked down on me.
 
When I was like four, and most other kids still rode tricycles,
Will took the training wheels off my little blue bike and taught me to ride it.
 
You can’t keep up on four wheels, Trace, he said.
 
Even on two, it took a while,
but eventually, I did.
At least, I came close.

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