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Lion, Melissa.
UPSTREAM
New York : Wendy Lamb, 2005.
IL YA
ISBN 0385908776

(2 booktalks)

Click on the book to read Amazon reviews
Booktalk #1

Steven is gone and spending the night in his room won't bring him back.  But Marty can't help sneaking up to his home and climbing in .  At school, there are looks of pity on the faces.  Marty doesn't want others to see her pain.  She is happy that a new person has bought the movie theater.  Now she has someone to talk to who doesn't know her tragic past.  Doesn't know what happened on that day in the Alaskan bush.  Doesn't know what Marty can't tell.  Can Marty ever face what happened and move on?

Booktalk #2

Marty is starting her senior year of high school and for the first time is nervous about returning to school because she knows everyone will remember what happened last summer. They will stare at her as she sits alone without her boyfriend Steven and gossip about what they think happened. She will not tell anyone what happened when she and Steven went into the Alaskan Bush, not her mother, not her two younger sisters, and not her father when he returns briefly from his Coast Guard duty. She won’t even tell Katherine, her new friend and owner the theatre where Marty works. She sneaks into Steven’s room at night after his family moves away and remembers times they spent together. She shares stories of him and the whale preservation project with Katherine as they work at the theatre and fly fish together. She debates leaving Alaska for college to study Marine Biology, which was Steven’s idea, and decides this would be a good way to put distance between her and what happened. Then the Fish and Game Department start an investigation into what happened that day. Despite her parents’ protests they are adamant about questioning Marty concerning the details of what happened that day out in the bush. What did happen that day? Will Marty finally divulge the terrible secret she has been keeping? To find out, read Upstream by Melissa Lion.  (Prepared By: Michelle Williams for SCASL Young Adult Awards, 2008)

SUBJECTS:     Grief -- Fiction.
                        Family life -- Alaska -- Fiction.
                        Death -- Fiction.
                        Alaska -- Fiction.
                        High schools -- Fiction.
                        Schools -- Fiction.

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