cover image Someone Else's Baby

Someone Else's Baby

Geraldine Kaye. Hyperion Books, $13.95 (138pp) ISBN 978-1-56282-149-4

Kaye poses a lot of hard questions and provides no easy answers in this moving and heartfelt story of a pregnant teen. Terry, 17, doesn't want to think about her future, even though she's five months pregnant, doesn't know who the father is and hasn't told her parents. In the journal she keeps for her unborn child she reasons, ``What's the point in thinking ahead, when the past is dead and gone and the future may never happen and the present is swinging all around you?'' Considered helpless and incompetent by her parents, Terry has never been one to make choices for herself. But as her pregnancy progresses, she gradually becomes more responsible for her own life. Still, she feels like a failure when she gives up baby Elizabeth for adoption and consequently suffers an emotional breakdown. This is no mere cautionary tale for wayward girls: Terry ultimately grows to like herself and live life on her own terms. However, as she confesses to Elizabeth in the book's penultimate lines, ``I still think about you and dream about you a lot. I guess I always will.'' Ages 12-up. (Apr.)