Sick Girl Secrets
Sick Girl Secrets
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West 44 Books
Annotation: Sometimes in high school, all you want is to be invisible. Being invisible might be the biggest problem of all for Natal... more
 
Reviews: 1
Catalog Number: #308560
Format: Library Binding
Special Formats: High Low High Low
Publisher: West 44 Books
Copyright Date: 2022
Edition Date: 2022 Release Date: 10/01/21
Pages: 187, 4 pages
ISBN: 1-9785956-3-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-9785956-3-7
Dewey: Fic
Dimensions: 22 cm
Language: English
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews

In free verse, a girl explores the social dislocation of an Ehlers-Danlos syndrome diagnosis.Sixteen-year-old Natalie has missed tons of school since her surgeries. Nobody at school knows about her diagnosis, but nobody can miss that much school without starting rumors. But though she wants to remain invisible and unnoticed, that will be impossible when she's going from class to class in her new motorized wheelchair. Luckily Natalie has an unexpected ally in her quest to be a "normal" girl. After the school principal denies her the necessary accommodations, Natalie grits her teeth, hides her wheelchair every day, and pretends to be "normal." It's not until she meets Riley, a wheelchair-using classmate, that Natalie begins to be open to visibility. Her friendship with Riley has its ups and downs, as Riley, a passionate disability activist, doesn't have much patience for Natalie's internalized ableism. Fairly pedestrian verse does no harm to Natalie's journey from self-loathing to enthusiastic and joyful action. The real villain to defeat isn't the cartoonishly petty school administrator, it's internalized shame. Natalie only mentions the skin color of non-White people, reinforcing the White default for her and other characters; Riley has brown skin.Learning to love her whole disabled self is the greatest challenge for the protagonist of this novel. (Verse novel. 12-16)

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Kirkus Reviews
Reading Level: 3.0
Interest Level: 9-12
Guided Reading Level: N

Sometimes in high school, all you want is to be invisible. Being invisible might be the biggest problem of all for Natalie. She has a disability that causes chaos to her body on the inside but leaves her unmarked on the outside. She's learned to hide her pain so well that you would never guess she's not the same Natalie as she was before she got sick. But after having surgery, Natalie must return to school in a wheelchair. Now, Natalie has to decide if the painful consequences of pretending to be healthy are worth keeping the last of her sick girl secrets.


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