Bibliographic Information
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Publication year: 2014
ISBN: 978-1047149073
Reader’s Annotation
Laura Jean loves her sisters, her dad, and her quiet life. She has also loved five boys in her life, all of whom just received the secret love letter she wrote to them and intended to always keep secret!
Plot Summary
Laura Jean Song Covey has been in love five times in her life. Each time she wanted to get over a boy, she wrote a “goodbye” letter to them and kept them in a secret hat box. She never meant for them to be sent, but somehow each boy received their letter. The mysterious mailing of all five letters sets off a chain reaction of events that Laura Jean finds herself in the middle of, including a love triangle and leaked “sex” tape! She enters into a pretend relationship with one of her old crushes so that they can both make someone else jealous. But, what happens when she wants to write a real love letter to someone she’s only supposed to pretend to like?
Critical Evaluation
This novel is reminiscent of vapid high school romance stories complete with a complicated love triangle, with one exception: the character of Laura Jean. Han made the decision to have Laura Jean’s mother die in front of her when she was young. The death could have been more traumatic in many ways, but witnessing it and subsequently growing up with her older sister as her main female role model instead of her mother gives Laura Jean a level of maturity that other teenage girls lack. Being the middle daughter, she is also responsible as a role model for her younger sister Kitty. This depth of character helps Laura Jean handle having her private letters, and later a voyeuristic video, leaked to the public relatively well. She is still realistically distraught, but has the family support and maturity to make good decisions and resolve the problems. If, for example, Peter’s ex-girlfriend Genevieve were the main character involved in a love triangle and invasion of privacy this book would have had a very different ending. As it is, Han’s portrayal of Laura Jean’s personality is ultimately what drives the story and sets it apart from other high school dramas.
Author Information
Jenny Han (Han like Han Solo, not Han like hand) was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. She went to college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Go Heels!) and she went on to graduate school at the New School in New York City, where she received her MFA in Writing for Children. She lives in Brooklyn.
Source: http://jennyhan.com/bio.html
Genre
Fiction
Curriculum Ties
Creative Writing
Booktalking Ideas
Ask the audience to think about what they would do if their personal diary, journal, or purposefully unsent letters were exposed to everyone they ever had a crush on. Tell them this is what happens to Laura Jean in this novel, causing both exciting and high-school-level tragic things to happen. Read a passage that is one of the boys revealing that he got her letter, which will stir interest without giving away major plot points. Then give a rating from 1-5 and tell the audience why this is my rating, and take questions.
Reading Level/Interest Age
Publisher’s Weekly: Age 12 up
School Library Journal: Grade 7 - 10
Challenging Issues
Bullying
Sexual Content and/or Nudity
Preparing for Potential Challenges
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-potential-challenges.html
Why the Item Was Chosen
I included To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before in my collection for two reasons. First, Jenny Han is a talented young adult author who is just beginning of her popularity. She has The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy, the Burn for Burn trilogy, and several stand-alone novels as well as this one and its sequel, PS I Still Love You. The third in this trilogy will be coming out in 2017, which will prompt young adult patrons to want to read the first two in the series. If the collection were more than 35 items, I would at least include this book’s sequel, if not all of Han’s work. The second reason I included this book in my collection is because it is a classic high school drama story with the twist of a girl who did not ask for any of this to happen. Once she finds herself in the middle of it all, she takes it in stride and tries to fix her reputation as noninvasively as possible, all while staying close with her family and staying true to her own personality and desires. I think that in terms of young adult literature, Laura Jean is a good example who is also involved in an interesting enough story that she will influence adolescent readers.
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