Hannah, a girl in Clay's class, has committed suicide. Weeks later, a box of 6 7 cassette tapes arrives at Clay's house. He's curious enough to find a cassette player, not an easy task, because who was listening to audiotapes back then. He's shocked when he hears Hannah's voice.
He's compelled to keep listening. He wants to hear Hannah's reasons for why she took her own life. And he believes that he might be responsible in part. I'm not going to go into too many details of the story. It's told in an interesting manner. We hear a little Hannah on the audiotapes interspersed with Clay's reactions and thoughts about what he's just heard.
Let's go back to my first reading. Each year while I was teaching, I had each student select a book that we'd read at the same time and discuss, one-on-one. I got lots of the popular fifth grade books, sometimes I'd even get duplicates so I had less reading to do and more time for discussing. I hadn't heard of this young adult novel in 2009 when a fifth grade student of mine suggested that we read Thirteen Reasons Why. I looked it up and immediately contacted the student's mom to make sure that she was okay with us reading this novel that had pretty mature content. After all, it had been banned all over the place. The mom was fine with us reading the book and was glad that her daughter would have the opportunity to discuss this mature content with me, an adult. I barely remember the girl's name, but I do remember some of the really deep conversations that we were able to have. Even thinking about it now, wow. Just wow.
It also gave me an interesting context in which to approach my Books and Beer Club discussion. I really loved this month's meeting. Maybe because everything around this very difficult book brought back good memories of one of the favorite things I did with students while teaching.
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