After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick

The book I am currently reading is After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick. Jeffery a cancer survivor is starting 8^th grade, but people might know him better as Jeffery the 5 year old with cancer whose brother, Steven, would do anything for him. This is the sequel to Drums, Girls And Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick and Jeffery is know a teenager with out cancer whose brother is in Africa study drums. Jeffery learns to understand the fact that his father loves him even though he doesn’t always show it.

Jeffery’s dad always wanted him to be amazing at math but methotrexate, a drug he took while he had cancer, caused some brain damage, which makes school hard for him. “Whenever I brought home a math test, he’d say ‘Why don’t you just try a little harder, Jeffery?’” (p.27-28) Jeffery dreaded sharing anything with his dad about math because he was always disappointed in Jeffery. This led Jeffery to keep secrets from his dad.

My next quote is “I was screwed. I knew my dad would have a cow, and that as soon as he saw it, he’d start pushing math on me so hard that every time I sneezed, fractions would fly out of my nose. Fortunately for me, my father never thinks to look for the mail by taking apart the garbage disposal, so that’s where the letter went.”(p.29) Jeffery doesn’t want to tell his dad about the state test so much that he hides that letter from him. Jeffery thinks that if he tells his dad he won’t have a moment of peace because his dad will be forcing math facts on him.   

Jeffrey says, “‘My dad is thrilled. I told him it’s because of the question he helped me with on the night before the statewides. But he said, ‘No, buddy, we have your friend Tad to thank.”’(p.255-256) Jeffery’s dad finally is proud of his son because he got put into regular math, which Jeffery has never been in.

All parents can learn form Jeffery’s dad to accept their children’s problems. I highly recommend this book if you have already read Drums, Girls And Dangerous Pie.