I´ll Give You the Sun - Printz Honor


 





I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson is a novel that flips back and forth to the past and the future.  It follows two thirteen year old twins Noah and Jude.  Noah is a talented artist who is sociall awkward.  Noah and Jude are very close and know what each other are thinking.  However, when their mother, Diana, decides to prepare them for a prestigious art school, Jude becomes jealous of her brother's artistic talent and sabotages his application.  Three years go by and Jude is attending the art school, but Noah is not.  Noah no longer does art, but has begun to hang out with Jude's old popular friends.  Jude has become more eccentric and believes in folklore.  She has gone to wearing baggy clothes and putting onions in her pocket to keep evil spirits and boys away.  Their mother has died and Jude believes Diana has cursed her clay sculptures.  She decides to make a stone sculpture as a way to communicate with her mother.  This leads Jude to a professional sculptor, Guillermo Garcia.  Meanwhile in the past, Noah has begun a new hobby, cliff diving into the sea.  He also has been spying on drawing classes at the art school and notices an English model, Oscar,  that gets fired for drinking on the job.  Noah also makes a new friend, Brian, who is studying astronomy and is an all star baseball pitcher.  Noah develops feelings for him, but worries they will not be returned even though they hold hands at the movie theatre.  Nothing goes beyond that.  At the end of the summer, they are at Brian's going away party and the game Seven Minutes in Heaven is started.  Imaging Brian, Noah begins kissing a girl in the closet.  Brian witnesses this and becomes angry.  While leaving the party Noah runs into the model from art school and is encouraged to go see Guillermo to seek sculpting lessons.  Later in the future, Jude also begs Guillermo to be her teacher.  He agrees to give her lessons, using Oscar to pose nude for her.  Jude becomes flirty with Oscar. She also decides to create a sculpure of her and her brother, not her mother.  After her next lesson, Jude goes through the room where Oscar stays.  She finds pictures of her and becomes happy.  When Oscar returns with a woman, she hides in the closet.  Jude overhears Oscar tell the woman that the person in the pictures is nobody, she runs out of the closet upset and flees the studio.  Back in the past, Noah decides to take the sculpting lessons from Guilermo and also reconciles with his sister.  Over Christmas break, Brian comes home and they are caught by Diana in the bedroom together.  When Noah follows his mom, he finds out she is having a secret affair with Guilermo.  He also finds Brian kissing a girl, and out of anger, Noah outs him.  The novel continues to weave through the future and the past of the twin's complex life.

Nelson, J. (2015). I'll give you the sun. Walker Books.


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