Notes from the Midnight Driver

• Genre: Fiction; young adult realistic
• Originally Published: 2007
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 850L; grades 7-12
• Structure/Length: 27 chapters; approx. 288 pages; approx. 4 hours, 42 minutes on audio
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Angry and vengeful after his parents’ divorce, 16-year-old Alex gets drunk and smashes his mother’s car into someone’s garden. He is sentenced to 100 hours of community service at a nursing home, where he gradually befriends Sol, the cranky elderly man he is charged with helping.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Drunk driving

Jordan Sonnenblick, Author

• Bio: Born in 1969 on an Army base in Missouri; grew up on Staten Island, New York; attended Stuyvesant High School, where his creative writing teacher was author Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes); majored in English at the University of Pennsylvania; taught 5th grade in Texas with the Teach for America program; wrote his book Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie for an 8th-grade student of his whose brother had cancer; lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and children
• Other Works: Dodger and Me (2008); Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie (2010); Falling Over Sideways (2016); The Boy Who Failed Show and Tell (2021)
• Awards: ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2008)

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• Self-Discovery and Emotional Maturity for Teenagers
• Approaching Conflict in Healthy Ways
• Confronting Illness and Death