Reason Book Chosen
I love memoirs, and I love graphic novels. I especially love the places where those two meet. Also, I have a background in art therapy and am drawn to these types of novels as I find them to be incredibly powerful and accessible to teens. I saw this one on the shelf, and without knowing anything about it, picked it up.
Bibliographic Information
Author: Nadia Shivack
Publisher: Ginee Seo Books
ISBN: 0064408183
Copyright Date: 2007
Genre
Nonfiction/Memoir
About the Author
Nadia Shivak is an eating disorder survivor, whom continues to struggle, to this day, with her eating disorder and aspires to work in mental health. This is her first book.
Reader’s Annotation
The story does not wither away with the person. The story breathes life.
Plot Summary
Nadia grows up with and struggles with her eating disorder, from age fourteen on. Nadia, is a middle child, with two sisters, a mother whom is a Holocaust Survivor and has her own strange eating habbits, and a father whom is overbearing and has high expectations of her. Nadia deals with depression and isolates herself from family, from friends, from her interests. For college, she moves to New York but her eating disorder follows her. Her weight fluctuates, as do her emotions, as she moves into adulthood, and moves closer to coming to terms with her disorder.
Critical Analysis
This book is a good resource for someone who wants to learn about an eating disorder from a personal and somewhat non-threatening perspective. It may be sutiable for someone recovering from an eating disorder, but may not be suitable for someone who is in the early stages of recovery or in denial, because it is very detailed and somewhat graphic and might act as a trigger. Even with the subject matter being difficult and graphic, the childlike amateur drawings do seem to work on some level. This might also be because they seem to capture Nadia’s psyche since she seems to be very much still trapped in her childlike self.
Some of the handwriting is hard to decipher and some of the pages have “too much” going on in them.
The facts and statistics about eating disorders, pulled from a variety of reputable sources cited in the back of the book, are randomly placed on different pages in yellow text blocks. For the most party they are educational and somewhat interesting, mainly for someone who does not know a lot about the disease.
Themes/Issues/Tags, Eating Disorder, Bullemia, Anorexia, Binging, Depression, Recovery, Art Therapy, Writing Therapy, Isolation, Psycho-Educational
Controversial Subject Matters
Eating disorders
Defense: The book is personal but also factual. It is only one person’s story and does not cover everything about eating disorders, nor does it try to. It is not preachy and does not try to push general opinions or theories about eating disorders.
Possibility of triggering people in recovery
Defense: From the cover and page one, it is clear what this book is about.
Looks like children’s book from quickly browsing, but may not be suitable for less mature readers
Defense: It is categorized as a young adult novel. Less mature readers can still read the fact blurbs and get some basic introductory less sensitized information.
Booktalking Ideas
Nadia loves “Ed”. Describe Ed like a person using words Nadia uses in the book to describe her eating disorder (big, strong, controlling etc.) Describe her love hate relationship with “Ed” and how she wants to get away from “him”. Blow up the picture of Nadia riding on “Ed’s” motorcycle with him and show this. Reveal at the end that “Ed” is actually her Eating Disorder.”
It is a visual book so let teens flip through it or blow up a few of the pages and pass around so they can get a sense of the aesthetic.
Have you ever felt alone, or frustrated, or like you were trying to battle something bigger than yourself? Have you ever journaled about it or drawn it out?
Curriculum Ties
Health - Eating Disorders
Art Class (art therapy)
Reading Level
10+
Interest Level
14-17
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