Teen Review: After by Amy Efaw

My name is Jenna. I go to a high school where I’m part of the marching band and the cheerleading squad. I’m pretty busy, but I always find time to read. I’m also very creative and I like doing little crafts out of random things I find.

After by Amy Efaw

As a reader, this novel will challenge your beliefs and your character. It has the ability to make you think twice about the kind of person you are.

After by Amy Efaw is about a girl named Devon Davenport who seemed to be perfect. She was a class A babysitter, had a 4.0 grade point average, and had insane soccer abilities that would soon take her to the Olympics. Meanwhile, Devon was holding a very big secret. She was pregnant.

Or was she holding a secret? Devon claims that she had no clue that she was pregnant. She did not recognize the symptoms and she was essentially clueless to what was going on in her body. When the baby was born, Devon stuffed the baby into a trash bag and threw the bag into a trash can outside of her apartment.

Now, Devon is in a juvenile court system, being charged with multiple offenses, but the most severe is murder.

This novel is similar to a mystery novel. Readers do not know if Devon is telling the truth or not about being oblivious to the pregnancy. Personally, there were moments in the novel that I wanted Devon to be innocent and I was rooting for her, but when you take a step back, you remember the ugly and horrific act she committed and then wonder how you could support her.

This heartbreaking novel has so many different layers that are explored from cover to cover and it is almost impossible to put down.

Testing and Education Reference Center

Wait, what?  Why am I posting about standardized tests in July?

I don’t want to be lame and lecture anyone on their vacation, but for some reason, it seems to be in the air lately.  I’ve noticed a ton of folks looking for study guides in the Job and Career Education Center.  Just yesterday I saw about ten people walk out with one, and for at least one test, every single book in the building is currently checked out.

If this ever happens to you and you can’t wait for a request to come in, don’t panic!  Odds are, we can still get you access to an online version of the book, along with practice tests and other study aids.  Go to http://www.carnegielibrary.org/research/jobsedu/databases.html and scroll down to “Testing and Education Reference Center.”  Then, if you’re in a library, click “Library Access,” otherwise click “Remote Access” and enter your library card number.  (While TERC might look like any other website, it’s a private database that the library subscribes to so our cardholders can have access to it.  So you have to go through all these steps to prove you’re allowed in.)

You’ll have to create an account, which TERC mostly uses to keep track of practice test scores and things like that.  This should be a quick and painless process.  Once you’re in, you can either browse for your test by hovering over the category buttons (high school tools, college prep tools, etc), or you can just enter the name of your test into the search box in the upper right.

Okay, that’s probably more than you really wanted to know about standardized tests at this exact moment.  But just in case you’re still listening and you have any questions, you can visit or call the JCEC in Oakland, or your local branch.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled summer…