about the book
Travis Coates died at the age of sixteen from cancer and his head was cryogenically frozen.
Five years later, he wakes up with a new body, still sixteen. His new body has different abilities than his original one, which is weird. And people consider him both a celebrity and a freak. It’s too much to handle. He just wants to talk to his best friend Kyle and girlfriend Cate.
But they’re both twenty-one.
Kyle is struggling through college. Cate is engaged to someone else. Neither have time for a teenager.
Travis won’t accept Cate’s “no” and is determined to win her back. He’s got nothing to lose; after all, he already died once.
about the author
John Corey Whaley grew up in Springhill, Louisiana. A sarcastic kid, he used his humor to relieve the boredom of small town life, often telling stories and putting on skits with his friends.
When he was ten or eleven, he started writing about aliens and underwater civilizations. At seventeen, he wanted to get out of town and thought his way out was to be an author. That meant that he would eventually have to finish a novel. From Louisiana Tech University, he earned a bachelor’s in English and a master’s in secondary education. He taught middle and high school English for five years. While dodging the students “crafty projectiles,” he daydreamed about writing full time.
One day while listening to National Public Radio, he heard the true story of the 2005 rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Brinkley, Arkansas. Inspired, he decided to write a coming-of-age story set in a small town like the one he grew up in, about a missing kid, imaginary zombies, and a book of the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. Where Things Come Back became John’s first published book. It won the American Library Association Printz Award in 2012. Noggin is John’s second novel and is also winning accolades. He is currently working on his third book; it’s about anxiety and how we are all a little crazy one way or the other.
John’s favorite color is green, books provide his favorite smell, and his favorite word is defenestration. He is an occasional bongo player and is terrible at all sports but kayaking. He once had a curse put on him by a strange woman in a Wal-Mart store. He currently splits his time between California and Louisiana.
Sources:
Author website
Author biography: Amazon
Author biography: Wikipedia
Author interview: The Guardian
Author video interview
Book trailer: Noggin
Also by John Corey Whaley:
Where Things Come Back. Atheneum Books for Young Readers. 2011.
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