Title: Skin
Author: Adrienne Maria Vrettos
Summary:
These are the things you think when you come home to find that your sister has starved herself to death and you have dropped to your knees to revive her:
1. My sister is flat like a board. There’s fat guys in the locker room with bigger boobs than she has.
2. When I scream my sister’s name into her face, I can hear my father’s voice in my own.
3. Where is it you’re supposed to press? In the middle, on the side? Left or right?
Fourteen-year-old Donnie has always relied on his older sister Karen to shield him from the harshness of life- be it lengthy and frequent parental fights or a miserable social life. However, Karen is fading fast, wasting away from anorexia, leaving Donnie to decide if he too will fade into the background via social isolation and bullying or challenge himself to carve out his own place of acceptance.
Who will like this book: Fans of serious drama and family upheaval. Told in the first person this book gives you the vantage point few anorexia stories do- that of a young male family member left behind.
If you like this, try this: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, Cut by Patricia McCormick, Skinny by Ibi Kaslik, and Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
Recommended by: Jen, Fairfield Woods Branch Teen Librarian