Please Ignore Vera Dietz

Please Ignore Vera Dietz is a novel I would recommend to anyone and everyone. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the amount of honesty that you usually don’t see in a novel about death.

 This novel is told from the perspective of Vera Dietz, an eighteen-year-old girl struggling to cope with the death of her “ex” best friend Charlie. Vera attempts to cope with his death while putting up with her father, her annoying job, and avoiding her destiny, as her father calls it. Vera’s blunt thoughts and alcoholic-like actions make this story hard to put down. It is comedic in an honest and cruel type of way. Vera is the epitome of teen angst.

This story contains a lot of switching between present and past. I would have the students work on a timeline in order to keep them on track with Vera’s thoughts. She goes back and fourth a lot in order to help us see her love for Charlie and where her anger stems from. I would use this book in a classroom as low as 5^th grade due to some crude, sexual language and drinking.

This book reminded me a lot of Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why. I think they would be good to read together. It is also about students learning to cope with a peer’s death in their own ways. I would have the students compare and contrast the attitude of the narrators and their coping strategies so we may discuss healthy versus unhealthy coping strategies in teens.