Crossover! Featuring Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give you The Sun

Do you crave crossover fiction? Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You The Sun has what you’ve been looking for.

Also in this post: suggestions for some other fantastic examples of fiction for young adults and adults alike.

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson (Dial Books, 2014)

This is the story of twins, Jude and Noah. At age 13, Jude is outgoing and fearless, while her twin brother, Noah, is an introverted artist, who can’t wait to get into an exclusive art school away from the mainstream. Noah has also developed feelings for the enigmatically cool boy next door.

The twins, once almost telepathically inseparable, have arrived at an age where they are beginning to drift apart and keep secrets. Jude’s social circle includes the very people who torment Noah. To drive the wedge deeper, it seems as though their athletic father favors Jude, while their artistic mother pays more attention to Noah. The poison of jealousy is already at work when painful events happen that turn the twins’ lives upside down—and drive them even further apart.

In kaleidoscopic flashbacks of synesthetically lyrical prose, we are invited into both Jude and Noah’s stream of consciousness. The reader can taste the bitterness of the fissures that tear the twins apart from each other, and feel the heartbreak of tragedy that rips them asunder, each twin bearing her and his own pain and secrets. The two perspectives bouncing back and forth in time—Jude at age 16 and Noah at age 13.5—reveal two sides of the same story, and treat the reader to a complicated view of their schism. This book illuminates their journey, but will their paths drive them further apart or reunite them?

Suggested ages: Grade 9 and up

I’ll Give You The Sun on GoodReads

Awards: