Deeply moving, true story relates a father's recollection of his son's courageous and spirited battle against the brain tumor that would take his life at the age of seventeen. ( )

Inspiring book of author's son who dies from cancer yet graduates from high school and completes other goals while suffering. ( )

Gut-heartwrenchingly moving. I tried reading this years ago but couldn't get into the way Gunther told the story––too erudite for me at the time. I guess I've matured because I rolled through this in one day. I couldn't put it down. I was intrigued by the 1940s dialogue and history and medicine capability at that time, but I was thoroughly enchanted with Johnny and his heroic quest just to live. The reminder of how precious life is sometimes can sound so trite, but put forth in this memoir of a 17-year-old who had the zen of life to end each day with "What a great day, Mom"––even if his brain had just been opened up again for drainage––brought me to my knees. When I'm having a bad day, I will think of this young, brave man and try to follow his example every day of my life. ( )

This book is one of those conceits where someone died, so someone close to the deceased decided that having some heart-wrenching emotional experience based on that and the close connection to the person had two effects:

1. It made the subject of the tale (the deceased person) more special than millions of other people who've died of the same tragic thing.

2. It made the survivor into a first-rate author.

In this case, the experience had neither of these effects, so far as I could tell. The major effects it did have from what I've seen, however, are also two in number:

1. It led to this book being inflicted on a bunch of kids in middle school, much to the detriment of their potential love of learning.

2. It gave me the catalyst needed to learn to stop reading a book that sucks. Before that, I always read a book to the end, no matter how bad it was.

Having quit reading a book assigned in school about halfway through, just because it was so awful, you might think it negatively affected my grade. The thing was so ploddingly predictable, though, that I just BSed my way through the quizzes and essay question tests on the book and got an A on all relevant class materials. I don't recommend it. ( )

Death Be Not Proud chronicles Johnny Gunther's gallant struggle against the malignant brain tumor that killed him at the age of seventeen. The book opens with his father's fond, vivid portrait of his son - a young man of extraordinary intellectual promise, who excelled at physics, math, and chess, but was also an active, good-hearted, and fun-loving kid. But the heart of the book is a description of the agonized months during which Gunther and his former wife Frances try everything in their power to halt the spread of Johnny's cancer and to make him as happy and comfortable as possible. In the last months of his life, Johnny strove hard to complete his high school studies. The scene of his graduation ceremony from Deerfield Academy is one of the most powerful - and heartbreaking - in the entire book. Johnny maintained his courage, wit and quiet friendliness up to the end of his life. He died on June 30, 1947, less than a month after graduating from Deerfield.