Posted

Cell phones--"with their texts and their apps and their electric, buzzy addictiveness"--become such a nuisance at Branton Middle School that they are banned by the administration. As a result, a new, old-fashioned idea comes along: sticky notes. Students begin communicating via Post-it notes, and lockers are soon plastered with little yellow shingles. As it turns out, Post-its work as well as cell phones for insults, anonymous cruelty, and ganging up on innocent victims. As narrator Frost (whose family's budget doesn't allow for a cell phone anyway) observes, "Sticky notes were the weapons and words were the ammunition." Young Frost is a perfect guide to this underworld of middle-school hell. He is a poet, even named for a poet. In a world where "words accumulate like a cancer, and then they eat away at you until there is nothing left," Frost is a young man for whom words matter, who understands that, while words on screens and Post-its can "break you to pieces," they also can be beautiful. "Gather enough of them and sometimes they can stick those same pieces back together." For a novel about words on little screens and sticky notes, Frost's story is somewhat long and unwieldy, but acute observations about social media and school life and a smart, engaging narrator make this a journey well worth taking. Readers might even want some Post-it notes to mark the good parts. dean schneider