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Summary
Summary
2014 National Book Award Finalist
A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)
Travis Coates has a good head...on someone else's shoulders. A touching, hilarious, and wholly original coming-of-age story from John Corey Whaley, author of the Printz and Morris Award-winning Where Things Come Back .
Listen--Travis Coates was alive once and then he wasn't.
Now he's alive again.
Simple as that.
The in between part is still a little fuzzy, but Travis can tell you that, at some point or another, his head got chopped off and shoved into a freezer in Denver, Colorado. Five years later, it was reattached to some other guy's body, and well, here he is. Despite all logic, he's still sixteen, but everything and everyone around him has changed. That includes his bedroom, his parents, his best friend, and his girlfriend. Or maybe she's not his girlfriend anymore? That's a bit fuzzy too.
Looks like if the new Travis and the old Travis are ever going to find a way to exist together, there are going to be a few more scars.
Oh well, you only live twice.
Author Notes
John Corey Whaley received a B.A. in English and an M.A in secondary English education from Louisiana Tech University. Before becoming a young adult author, he taught public school for five years. His first novel, Where Things Come Back, received the 2012 Printz Award and the 2012 Morris Award. His other novels include Noggin and Highly Illogical Behavior.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Whaley's novel , Travis Coates has his head surgically removed and cryogenically frozen after he dies of leukemia at age 16. Five years after his death, technological advances allow doctors to attach his head to a donor body that is taller and more muscular than the original. Travis awakens to restart life where he left off-sophomore year-,but it has only been five years, just long enough for everyone in he knows to have moved on. His best friend Kyle is struggling through college; his former girlfriend Cate is engaged to someone else. Heybourne masterfully captures the emotional roller coaster of Travis's journey into a new life-and body. His ability to capture the inflection of this first-person narrative while conveying Travis's emotions-and often disorientation-is truly commendable. Less praiseworthy is his portrayal of Travis's two male friends, who are often difficult to distinguish from one another. Otherwise, Heybourne keeps listeners thoroughly engaged in this audio rendition of a truly original story. Ages 14-up. A S&S/Atheneum hardcover. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Losing his battle to terminal cancer, sixteen-year-old Travis opts to have his head surgically removed, stored cryogenically, and restored to life at some point in the distant future when medical technology is able to attach it to a new body. That day comes sooner than anyone thinks, just five years later, but so much has changed. Adjusting to his new body and his unwanted fame are the least of his worries. Travis's best friend Kyle, who had come out to him, has now gone back into the closet; his girlfriend, Cate, is now engaged to somebody else; and his parents' relationship is not as healthy as it seems. Whaley's sophomore effort eschews the complicated narrative structure of Where Things Come Back for a more straightforward one; and the premise isn't the most original, with variations ranging from Peter Dickinson's classic Eva (rev. 7/89) to Mary Pearson's recent Jenna Fox trilogy. But readers will find it easy to become invested in Travis's second coming-of age -- brimming with humor, pathos, and angst -- and root for him to make peace with his new life. jonathan hunt (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Travis Coates has lost his head literally. As he dies from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, his head is surgically removed and cryogenically frozen. Five years pass, and, thanks to advances in medical science, it becomes possible to reanimate his head and attach it to a donor body. Travis Coates is alive again, but while his family and friends are all 5 years older, Travis hasn't aged he is still 16 and a sophomore in high school. Awkward? Difficult? Puzzling? You bet. In the past, the two people he could have talked to about this were his best friend, Kyle, and his girlfriend, Cate. But now they're part of the problem. Kyle, who came out to Travis on his deathbed, has gone back into the closet, and Cate is engaged to be married. Stubbornly, Travis vows to reverse these developments by coaxing Kyle out of the closet and persuading Cate to fall in love with him again. How this plays out is the substance of this wonderfully original, character-driven second novel. Whaley has written a tour de force of imagination and empathy, creating a boy for whom past, present, and future come together in an implied invitation to readers to wonder about the very nature of being. A sui generis novel of ideas, Noggin demands much of its readers, but it offers them equally rich rewards. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Whaley's sleeper debut, Where Things Come Back (2011), won both the Michael L. Printz Award and the William C. Morris Award, so readers will be eagerly awaiting this second effort.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
as far as I can recall - and it's been a while - being a teenager is confusing. You have to wrestle with all sorts of issues related to your identity, and the biggest struggle is simply feeling comfortable in your skin. That's why the premise of John Corey Whaley's young adult novel "Noggin" - outlandish as it is - has such wonderful resonance. It takes the idea of being alienated from your own body and makes it literal. When 16-year-old Travis Coates was dying of leukemia, he chose, as he puts it, to have his head "chopped off and shoved into a freezer in Denver, Colorado." Five years later, thanks to surprising medical advances, doctors sewed his cryogenically preserved head onto the corpse of a stranger, and woke Travis up. Holden Caulfield meets Frankenstein's monster. Let the complications ensue. First, Travis has to get accustomed to all the new parts below his neck (the body's former owner died of brain cancer, but was otherwise healthy). On the upside, his replacement body is taller and has a knack for skateboarding. Second, Travis has to adjust to a new world. He has been gone for only five years, a quarter of Rip Van Winkle's nap, but now his former girlfriend is engaged to another guy and his best friend - who confided he was gay to Travis when Travis was dying - is back to dating women. And then there's his unasked-for fame: the paparazzi, the fan mail, the screaming women, the detractors who say he's a spawn of Satan, the fanatics who see him as a thawed version of Jesus. And everybody hoping to get a peek at his infamous neck scar. Not to mention Travis's parents, who are just as emotionally unequipped for all this as he is. "I wondered if she'd ever smile again without crying, or if this had become her default setting," Travis says of his mother. "Maybe I wasn't the only one who needed a reset button." Whaley's first book, also for teenagers, was "Where Things Come Back," winner of the 2012 Michael L. Printz Award. That book's plot wasn't quite as bizarre, but already you could see the quality of Whaley's unconventional imagination. With "Noggin," Whaley is straddling two genres. Its most obvious allegiance is to the category of teenage romances featuring supernatural characters. But "Noggin" actually owes more to the John Green genre, which I like to call Greenlit. Green is the master of first-person, funny-sad young adult novels. His most popular - "The Fault in Our Stars" - also has a main character who is battling cancer. The good news is, Whaley can just about keep up with Green. Whaley has a gift for detail, describing a hospital through its noises: "Beeps, footsteps, the tearing of plastic, spinning wheels on carts, 'Wheel of Fortune' on the neighbor's TV. These were the sounds I died to, and these were the ones that welcomed me back." He can be very funny, as when Travis says of his friend's wardrobe, "I'm not even sure where one buys pleated blue-jeans, but it was possible and he proved it every day." And, like Green, he can choke you up, as when he tells how Travis's friends staged a year's worth of holidays in one night so he'd get to experience them all before he died. "Noggin" is not perfect. It occasionally feels repetitive, and Travis's new best friend is of the crude-but-lovable variety, which seems a little overfamiliar now. But for the most part, Whaley's themes - such as the question of whether we can ever let go of the past - and characterizations are strong. Whenever I finish a novel with a high concept, I do a little test and ask if the book would hold up if the conceit were magically stripped away, if you removed the gimmicks and were left with only the emotional skeleton. Would I still enjoy "Harry Potter" if it were about a nerdy nonwizard at a regular old boarding school? Probably, because the characters are so wonderfully drawn. Draco Malfoy is a loathsome weasel with or without a flying broom. On the other hand, imagine "Twilight" without vampires or werewolves. Deadly. As for "Noggin"? Well, if it had no time-shifting or cryogenics - if it were about a kid who, say, returned to school after a couple of years abroad - I'd still recommend it, thanks to Whaley's prose. But the transplanted head is a fine bonus. A. J. JACOBS is an editor at large at Esquire magazine and the author of "Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Five years ago, Travis Coates died at the age of 16 after a long, hard battle with leukemia. However, Travis was offered a chance to become the 17th test subject in a very unorthodox medical experiment, which involved cryogenically freezing his head and eventually bringing him back to life once science becomes more advanced. Science moves faster than either the doctors or Travis and his family ever imagined, and soon he is back with a healthy 16-year-old body thanks to a generous young donor. Kirby Heyborne fills Travis's voice with a realistic mix of pain, confusion, and the joy of being given a second chance, as he highers and lowers his pitch and volume. He also tackles the many people in Travis's life who had to grieve his loss and must now deal with his return from the dead-albeit with a different body. Heyborne matches his voice to each character, heightening it just enough for the female characters. This is a fascinating story that is sure to ignite lively debate in the classroom or simply as a family listen in the car. Though the topic is mature, there is no graphic content and only a bit of strong language, making this an ideal listen for middle school all the way up to adult. With a bit of selling, this is sure to be a popular audio choice.-Shari Fesko, Southfield Public Library, MI (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The madcap story of a boy who loses his head and finds it again. In the not-too-distant future, 16-year-old Travis Coates loses his head onceliterallyafter a deadly bout with cancer left him for dead. His head, cryogenically frozen as part of an experimental process to bring cancer victims back to life using donors, is the only thing that's left of him until he wakes up with it attached to the body of Jeremy Pratt in the Saranson Center for Life Preservation five years later. From there on out, Travis' life gets just as crazy as Whaley's bizarre setup. Lots of changes have taken place in five years, and Travis soon finds himself losing his head again, in the figurative sense. He has to drag his best friend back out of the closet, discovers terrible secrets about his parents, and pursues his old girlfriend, who is now 21 and engaged to another, great guy, to readers' cringe-inducing embarrassment on his behalf. Readers will recognize the Printz winner's trademark lovable characterizations in Travis' newfound BFF Hatton, who dubs him "Noggin" on his first day back at school. They'll also recognize the poignantly rendered reflections on life, love, death and everything in between. Weird? Yes. Great? Not quite, but it's pretty solid. It may be convoluted as hell, but Whaley's signature cadence and mad storytelling skillz are worth every page. A satisfyingly oddball Frankenstein-like tale of connectivity. (Fiction. 14 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Noggin CHAPTER ONE ADVANCED STUDIES IN CRANIAL REANIMATION Listen--I was alive once and then I wasn't. Simple as that. Now I'm alive again. The in-between part is still a little fuzzy, but I can tell you that, at some point or another, my head got chopped off and shoved into a freezer in Denver, Colorado. You might have done it too. The dying part, I mean. Or the choosing-to-die part, anyway. They say we're the only species on the planet with the knowledge of our own impending doom. It's just that some of us feel that doom a lot sooner than expected. Trust me when I tell you that everything can go from fine and dandy to dark and depressing faster than you can say "acute lymphoblastic leukemia." The old me got so sick so fast that no one really had time to do anything but talk about how sick he got and how fast he got that way. And the chemo and the radiation and the bone marrow transplants didn't do anything but make him sicker faster and with much more ferocity than before. They say you can't die more than once. I would strongly disagree. But this isn't a story about the old me dying. No one wants to hear about how I told my parents, my best friend, Kyle, and my girlfriend, Cate, that I was choosing to give up. That's a story I don't want to tell. What I do want to tell you, though, is a story about how I suddenly found myself waking up in a hospital room with my throat sore, dry and burning, like someone had shoved an entire bag of vinegar-soaked cotton balls down it. I want to tell you about how I was moving my fingers and wiggling my toes and how the doctors and nurses standing around me were so impressed with this. I'm not sure why blinking my eyes earned a round of applause and why it mattered that I was peeing into a bag, but to these people, it was like they were witnessing a true miracle. Some of the nurses were even crying. I want to tell you a story about how you can suddenly wake up to find yourself living a life you were never supposed to live. It could happen to you, just like it happened to me, and you could try to get back the life you think you deserve to be living. Just like I did. They told me I couldn't talk, said it was too early to try that just yet. I didn't know why, but I listened anyway. My mom and dad walked in, and she cried big tears and he went in to touch my face, and the nurse asked him to wait, asked him to please step aside until they were sure everything was working okay. They gave me a small white board and a marker and told me to write my name. I did. Travis Ray Coates. They asked me to write down where I live. I did. Kansas City, Missouri. They asked me to write down my school. I did. Springside High. They asked me to write down the year. I did. Then the room got suddenly quiet, and even though it was bright and clean and I could smell medicine and bleach, I knew something was wrong. This is when they told me that they'd done it. They'd gone through with the whole cranial hibernation and reanimation thing. They'd actually gone and cut my head off. I was so sure they'd put me under and changed their minds and that I'd gone through all that paperwork for nothing. But then my mom held up a mirror, and I saw that my head was shaved nearly bald and that my neck had bandages wrapped all around it. I looked pretty rough--my lips were purple and cracked, my cheeks were flushed, and my eyes were big and glazed over. Drugged, my eyes were drugged. I'm going to tell you the truth here and say that I never, not once, not even for a tiny second, thought this crazy shit would work. And I never thought they did either. My parents, I mean. But I looked up at their wet eyes and felt their hands on my hands, and I knew right then that they were as happy as any two people had ever been. Their dead son lying on a bed in front of them, silent but with a beat in his chest again. Mary Shelley's nightmare come true, right there in a hospital in Denver. Hospitals. I knew hospitals. I knew them like most kids know their own homes, know their neighborhoods, and know which yards to avoid and which ones it's safe to leave your bike in. I knew a nurse was only allowed to give you extra pain meds if a doctor had signed off on it first but that getting extra Jell-O only took a few smiles and maybe a joke or two, maybe a flash of the dimples. And like a factory, a hospital has its own rhythm, sounds from every room that collide in the air and echo down into your ears and repeat themselves, even in the nighttime, when the world wants so bad to appear silent and quiet and peaceful. Beeps, footsteps, the tearing of plastic, spinning wheels on carts, Wheel of Fortune on the neighbor's TV. These were the sounds I died to, and these were the ones that welcomed me back. A world so noisy you have to lean up a bit to hear the familiar doctor as he tries to speak over it all, and just as you were starting to get used to the light, you have to close your eyes to hear him. A world that looks almost exactly the same as the one you closed your eyes to before, so much the same that you think about laughing because you got so close to being done with it all. Until you finally hear the doctor as he speaks a little louder this time. "Welcome back, Travis Coates." Excerpted from Noggin by John Corey Whaley All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
