I'll Give You the Sun

I’ll Give You the Sun (2015) is an award-winning novel penned by Jandy Nelson about relationships, art, and destiny. It follows the story of twins Noah and Jude Sweetwine who once shared a close relationship but find themselves barely speaking to each other two years after their mother’s death.

Jandy Nelson is an American author who writes young adult fiction. I’ll Give You the Sun is her second novel, which won numerous awards and honors, including the 2015 Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. The book explores themes of sibling relationships, identity, talent and creativity, and love and luck. This guide is based on the 2015 Walker Books Kindle Edition.

Content Warning: This guide references anti-gay bias that occurs in the novel..

Plot Summary

The story opens as Noah is being chased by two older neighborhood boys who regularly bully him. He manages to escape and make his way home. At dinner, Dianna, his mother, announces that she has a message from his dead grandmother, Grandma Sweetwine. She thinks that Noah and his twin sister Jude should apply to California School of the Arts. Noah is thrilled, though Jude and Benjamin, their father, are not. Dianna and Benjamin argue as the twins discuss Grandma’s message in the adjoining room. Noah tries to cheer her up, suggesting that Grandma thought of CSA because of the beautiful sand sculptures of flying women that Jude has been making down at the beach. In preparation for the CSA application, Dianna begins to take the twins to art museums. She announces a drawing contest between the two, but is so awed by Noah’s work, she calls off the contest even before looking at Jude’s art. Jealous of Noah’s talent and the attention it draws from their mother, Jude’s relationship with Noah begins to sour. She stops going to museums and begins to hang out at the beach instead. Noah believes that if Dianna ever saw Jude’s sand sculptures, everything would change; although he has taken pictures of Jude’s sculptures, he does not show them to anyone.

Over the summer, Noah begins to visit the CSA campus to watch a live drawing class conducted there. During one of the sessions, the model, Oscar, catches Noah practicing sketches outside the window of the class. Oscar is dismissed later that session for being under the influence and he stops modeling at CSA. When Jude sees Noah’s drawing of Oscar, she is so taken by it, that she trades Noah the sun, stars, trees, and the ocean in exchange for it, as part of a game they have played since childhood in which they divvy up the universe.

Noah also meets and befriends Brian, a new boy who has moved in next door. Brian is the star pitcher on his boarding school team and is also deeply interested in science and astronomy. Noah is immediately attracted to him, and the boys begin taking rock collecting walks together. Brian becomes popular with the neighborhood girls, and for the first time in Noah’s life, he is cool by association. Noah blows off Jude when she attempts to reconcile with him and starts spending all his time with Brian and others. Jude is furious at Noah for stealing her friends, and at a party, she manipulates a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven so that she and Brian go into the closet together. A distraught Noah leaves the party and tears up every single sketch he has made of Brian, as well as the one of Oscar which he gave to Jude, before deleting every picture he has taken of Jude’s sand sculptures.

One afternoon, Noah makes his way over to Guillermo Garcia’s studio, a famous sculptor whom Oscar once told Noah about. He watches Guillermo and his work from afar, and on his way back, runs into Dianna parked surprisingly close to the studio. Over the next couple of months, Dianna begins to act strangely, always absent-minded and lost in thought. She even forgets Benjamin’s birthday. Dianna and Benjamin eventually tell the twins that Benjamin is moving out for a while. The twins watch Benjamin leave and confide their fears and worries in each other; Jude also assures Noah that nothing happened between her and Brian, and they reconcile.

Brian comes back to visit over Christmas break, and Noah goes for a walk with him where they finally kiss. Brian wants to keep their relationship a secret, as he worries it will end his baseball career. He has been harassed for his sexual orientation in the past. However, Dianna walks in on the boys masturbating together one day, and a terrified Brian immediately ends things with Noah. Not wanting Dianna to tell anyone else, Noah follows her out of the house believing that she is going to meet Benjamin. Instead, he sees Dianna meeting and kissing Guillermo. Distraught and heartbroken, when Noah runs into Brian with one of the girls on the way home, he reveals Brian’s secret to her. Back home, Dianna tells Noah that she is going to marry Guillermo; as she leaves, Noah yells at her that he hates her. Dianna’s car veers off a cliff, and she dies in the resulting crash, and a guilt-ridden Noah lies to Benjamin and Jude that Dianna was on her way to reconcile with Benjamin. Noah also visits Guillermo and repeats the same lie, blaming Guillermo for Dianna’s death. Two weeks after Dianna’s death, Noah jumps off Devil’s Drop, a high cliff overlooking the beach and almost drowns. Jude pulls him out and revives him. Upset and furious with her brother for almost abandoning her, Jude does not mail Noah’s CSA application along with hers.

Two years later, Jude is a student at CSA; when Noah didn’t get an acceptance, he destroyed all his work and stopped making art completely. Jude was pressured into losing her virginity to an older boy the night Dianna died and believes that this invited bad luck and led to Dianna’s death. Following this, Jude cuts off all her hair and exclusively dresses in drab clothing, in a self-inflicted “boy boycott.” She also obsessively follows the dictates of Grandma Sweetwine’s “Bible,” a handwritten collections of beliefs and superstitions about luck. Jude is regularly visited by Grandma Sweetwine’s ghost; while Dianna does not appear to her, Jude believes that Dianna is responsible for the fact that all of Jude’s clay work at CSA ends up mysteriously shattered.

Jude’s mentor, Sandy, tells her that she was accepted at CSA because of the pictures of the sand sculptures that came in with her application. Jude is confused, as she had not sent in any pictures and didn’t even know any existed. Now, however, she is in danger of losing her spot at CSA, because of all the breakage in the kiln. Jude decides to work in stone so that Dianna cannot shatter her art; she plans on creating a sculpture that will impress Dianna and force her to forgive Jude. Sandy directs her to Guillermo but warns her that Guillermo has not mentored or taught in over two years after something tragic happened to him. On her way to meet and convince Guillermo, Jude stops by a church where she runs into Oscar. He seems strangely familiar, but she can’t quite place him. Oscar flirts with Jude and takes pictures of her before leaving. At Guillermo’s studio, Jude encounters a haggard and drunk Guillermo who asks her to go away; upon repeated knocking, Jude is surprised to see Oscar open the door, but he, too, turns her away. On her way home Jude receives a message from one of Noah’s friends that he plans to cliff-dive off Devil’s Drop. Jude hides and waits for him, planning to save him if necessary, but as has been happening recently, when Noah jumps, he miraculously slows down before hitting the water.

Noah and Benjamin find Jude looking up Guillermo and his work on the internet, and both seem shaken. Jude later finds that all her bookmarks about Guillermo have been deleted from her laptop. Jude goes to Guillermo’s studio again, watching him work through a window. Guillermo catches her watching him and apprehends her while she tries to run away. He invites Jude in, and seeing her desperation to work in stone, agrees to mentor her. Jude begins to work with Guillermo; before the sculpture of Dianna, however, she realizes that she wants to make one of her and Noah instead. During her time with Guillermo, Jude also grows closer to Oscar. She learns that Guillermo saved Oscar’s life, taking him in and helping him get clean some years ago. Oscar confesses his attraction to Jude; however, the intensity of his own feelings scares him, and he begins to retreat from Jude, going on to kiss another girl.

Jude decides to try and make things right with Noah. She Googles Brian and finds that he is now mildly famous for being a high-performing, openly-gay baseball player. Jude emails Brian a link to a message Noah consistently posts on a website called Lost Connections, asking Brian to forgive him and meet him again. Jude also emails her mentor at CSA asking for a meeting with her and Noah; she decides to give up her spot for Noah. Before she can confess the truth to Noah, however, she finds out that he is on the verge of jumping off the highest, most dangerous cliff on the beach. Jude arrives in time and manages to save Noah along with Oscar’s help. A drunk Noah explains whenever he jumps, Dianna always saves him at the end, slowing his fall. Oscar helps Jude get Noah home; he visits her in her room later that night, apologizing for his earlier behavior before kissing her. Jude finally recognizes him as the face in Noah’s painting. However, Oscar catches a glimpse of a family picture on Jude’s dresser, and leaves abruptly when he realizes that Jude is Dianna’s daughter.

When Jude shows Guillermo the sketches of Dianna she has made for the sculpture, he comes to the same realization and tells her he cannot mentor her anymore. Noah and Oscar arrive at the studio as well, and the truth about Dianna is revealed. An overwhelmed Jude leaves along with Noah. Noah apologizes to Jude for having lied to her and Benjamin, and the two grieve Dianna together. Jude also confesses to what she did about Noah’s CSA application, and Noah is elated that he was not actually rejected. Noah shows Jude a wall he has been secretly painting at an abandoned construction site; he does not care about art school anymore, having recently rediscovered the magic in art for its own sake. Noah and Jude tell Benjamin the truths about Dianna and CSA, and he forgives them both graciously. They also discover that Guillermo is the one who sent the pictures of Jude’s sand sculptures to CSA. Jude believes that they are all destined to be in each other’s lives and wants to continue working with Guillermo. Noah reaches out to Brian directly, and the two reconcile. The book ends with Benjamin realizing and accepting Noah’s sexuality when he sees the boys holding hands together.