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Summary
Summary
In a return to middle-grade fiction, master of perspectives Jo Knowles depicts a younger sibling struggling to maintain his everyday life when his older sister is in crisis.
Noah is just trying to make it through seventh grade. The girls are confusing, the homework is boring, and even his friends are starting to bug him. Not to mention that his older sister, Emma, has been acting pretty strange, even though Noah thought she'd been doing better ever since the Thing They Don't Talk About. The only place he really feels at peace is in art class, with a block of clay in his hands. As it becomes clear through Emma's ever-stricter food rules and regulations that she's not really doing better at all, the normal seventh-grade year Noah was hoping for begins to seem pretty unattainable. In an affecting and realistic novel with bright spots of humor, Jo Knowles captures the complexities of navigating middle school while feeling helpless in the face of a family crisis.
Author Notes
Jo Knowles is the author of Read Between the Lines and See You at Harry's as well as several other acclaimed young adult novels. She lives in Vermont with her family.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The quotidian struggles of middle school-unrequited crushes, stinky lockers, boring academics-pale in comparison to the difficulties at seventh-grader Noah Morin's home, where his older sister, Emma, is wasting away by refusing to eat. Knowles (See You at Harry's) sensitively explores the pain of having a sibling with an eating disorder, including the exhaustion caused by constant worry, the lack of attention for the healthy child, and the tension at every meal as the family tries to accommodate Emma's dietary whims while closely monitoring how much she consumes. The story seesaws, sometimes uneasily, between some of the lighter situations that Noah is dealing with-crushes, a hairless therapy cat that roams the school hallways killing mice, a farting dog, etc.-and the dire one involving Emma. Even so, the relative lack of eating disorder stories told from a male point of view (especially for middle graders) makes this a welcome addition to the canon and a realistic look at how one person's severe illness can adversely affect everyone around them. Ages 10-14. Agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Revolving around girls, friends, and classes, Noah's life is fairly ordinary, except for one thing: his older sister, Emma, has an eating disorder. When she's hospitalized, Noah has a hard time coping. Though Emma's character doesn't have much dimension beyond her illness, Noah's conflicting emotions are believably nuanced, and Knowles's portrayal of middle-school dynamics is funny and relatable. (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
For eighth-grader Noah, juggling school, friends, and hormones would be simple enough. Unfortunately, there is also the Thing We Don't Talk About, which looms over his family life.Setting her tale in a small New England town and telling it from Noah's point of view, Knowles presents a small school where students and teachers all know each other. Friends fight and make up, tease, argue, joke, and support each other. The big issues among students are who likes whom and what complaints to put in the Suggestion Box. Back at home, things aren't quite as simple. The white boy's older sister, Emma, has an eating disorder that reached crisis point a couple of years ago. Now, no one mentions it, though the issue is very much present in their daily lives. Family life is allowed to be ruled by Emma's eating dictates, in the hope that Emma will not have a relapse. Unfortunately, not talking about it doesn't make the problem go away. And as Emma again ends up in the hospital and then a treatment center, the family goes into a tailspin. Feelings of guilt, grief, bewilderment, and anxiety pervade Noah's present-tense account. Through his eyes, Knowles offers a touching and realistic picture of the effect on those surrounding a person with an eating disorder.A poignant window and mirror into the lives of families affected by a health disorder. (Fiction. 11-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Seventh-grader Noah's life is full of pretty ordinary things: he gossips with his friends, competes with other guys for girls, and works on his art. Then there's his bossy older sister, Emma, and the Thing We Don't Talk About. That thing would be Emma's earlier eating disorder episode; Noah and his parents tiptoe around the subject, terrified of triggering Emma into relapse. When this happens, Emma is rushed off to long-term therapy, leaving Noah wracked with guilt. Why hadn't he and Mom and Dad seen what Emma was doing and intervened sooner? There is also anger (She doesn't have cancer . . . She's the one making herself sick!) and a general annoyance at classmates whose concerns now seem so trivial. Knowles deftly portrays Noah's response to an intense family crisis in the midst of the usual dramas and banalities of ordinary life. While the latter can sometimes reach the point of silliness, this is a powerful portrait of an eating disorder from a younger brother's unique perspective.--O'Malley, Anne Copyright 2016 Booklist
