A review by janewhitehurst
Noggin by John Corey Whaley

4.0

I listened to this on CD, and found myself looking forward to every car ride. Noggin is narrated by a 17 year old boy, Travis. He had terminal cancer and signed up for an experimental program which could potentially bring him back from the dead. When his cancer was unbearable, he had his head removed and cryogenically frozen. 5 years later, technology allows for it to be thawed and reattached to a donors body. The problem is, when he comes back, all of his friends are now in their 20s and he still 17, his parents have been grieving his death for five years, and he is now famous for undergoing the process. Everything is strange and hard for Travis, but the narration is funny and sweet and the book is really believable somehow. It's well written enough that the strangeness of the premise almost seems normal by the end.