November Blues

Overview

November Blues follows two teenagers left to rebuild their lives after a classmate's death during a hazing incident. November Nelson, newly aware that she is pregnant with the boy's child, must decide how to move forward as a single mother while still finishing high school. Her chapters trace the practical and emotional weight of that decision, from strained friendships to the fear of facing her family with the news.

Running alongside her story is that of Josh, the dead boy's cousin, who carries a private sense of blame for what happened. Rather than return to the music program where he had shown real promise, Josh instead joins the football team for his senior year, a choice that reads less like ambition than penance. Draper alternates between the two narrators, letting their parallel griefs comment on each other without ever fully intersecting.

The novel is part of Sharon M. Draper's loosely connected Hazelwood High series, and it continues that series' interest in showing how a single tragic event ripples outward into the ordinary, unglamorous work of continuing to live.

Themes and Context

Much of the book's tension comes from the gap between what November and Josh feel obligated to do and what they actually want. November's pregnancy forces adult decisions onto a character who is still, in every other respect, a kid; Josh's switch from music to football is framed less as a change of heart than as a way to punish himself, giving up the thing he's good at because he no longer feels he deserves it. Draper is less interested in resolving these tensions neatly than in showing how grief distorts the choices teenagers make about their own futures.

The dual narration also lets the novel sit with a question it never states outright: whose loss counts as the "real" one after a death like this. November's grief is bound up with a body and a future she didn't choose; Josh's is bound up with guilt over a role he can't undo. Read alongside its predecessor in the series, the book extends Draper's broader project of writing directly to teenage readers about consequences that don't resolve on a convenient timeline, treating them as capable of sitting with ambiguity rather than needing a tidy moral.

Why November Blues Has Been Challenged

Teen pregnancy sits at the center of most objections to this novel, with some parents and reviewers arguing that a narrative built around a pregnant high school student normalizes or even implicitly endorses teenage sexual activity, regardless of the consequences the story depicts. Related concerns focus on the book's frank treatment of the physical and emotional realities of pregnancy, material some challengers consider inappropriate for the middle-grade and early-high-school readers who make up much of Draper's audience.

The hazing death that opens the story draws separate objections, with critics pointing to its portrayal of dangerous peer pressure and underage risk-taking as more explicit or unsettling than they want in assigned classroom reading. Taken together, these complaints reflect a broader unease with the book's insistence on depicting serious consequences without softening them for a young audience. In the records this catalog tracks, the novel has been challenged in one state and three school districts.