Crutcher, Chris. The Sledding Hill. Greenwillow, 2005. ISBN 0060502436. $15.99. 240 p. Reviewer: Laura Wadley Reading Level: Young Adult Rating: Dependable Genre: Contemporary realistic fiction; Subject: Censorship--Juvenile Fiction; Death--Juvenile Fiction; Book--Reviews; Eddie Profitt loses his father and his best friend Billy in the same terrible year, so he stops speaking. Luckily Billy is still hanging around in the sweet, pain-free, very cool place where we go after we die. He postpones exploring the galaxies to help Eddie learn to live again. Billy helps Eddie stand up to a fundamentalist English teacher/pastor who wants to ban a book which is required reading in his school's "Really Modern Literature" class. Eddie and Billy are deeply sympathetic, well-developed characters--funny, bright, thoughtful, and intelligent. One comes to care very deeply for both of them--Eddie, in particular--during the course of the narrative. Unfortunately, the characters Crutcher doesn't like in th
