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Elsewhere | LitPick Book Reviews
Elsewhere
Elsewhere
Elsewhere
Gabrielle Zevin
Is it possible to grow up while getting younger?Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere’s museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatric practice.  Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver’s license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she’s dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn’t want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward? This moving, often funny book about grief, death, and loss will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned. Elsewhere is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Book Details

Genre: 

  • Adventure
  • Fantasy

Age Level: 

  • 12 and up
Profile Picture
RC

Liz had an okay life. She was going to get her learner's permit in about a year, she had a prom coming up, and she had a pretty nice family. Then, one morning she wakes up to find herself on a boat! She meets all sorts of strange characters on the boat. Such as Curtis Jest, a member of her favorite band, Machine, and Thandi, a girl who claims to have been shot in the head. Liz is positive she's dreaming. Liz gets a letter, telling her to visit the Observation Deck. When she gets there, she gazes upon her own funeral. Then she gets it. This isn't a dream. She's dead.

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