Body Drama

An acclaimed author of adult books pens her first novel for teens, deliveringthis haunting, beautiful, and ultimately hopeful story of one girl's strugglewith anorexia. Original.

When her mother takes her to live in the city, Carmen's life spins out of control. She begins to take charge of the only thing she can--what she eats. This is a searing portrait of one girl's descent into the world of eating disorders.

Beauty pageant winner, homecoming queen--Lara has the world at her feet. Until she gets fat.
Despite a strict diet and workout schedule, Lara is soon a nameless, faceless, 200-pound-plus teenage blimp. She's desperate to get her to-die-for body back--and to find an explanation for her rapid weight gain.
When she's diagnosed with a mysterious metabolic disorder that has no known cure, Lara fears she'll spend the rest of her life trapped in a fat suit. Who will stand by her? Her image-conscious family? Her shallow friends? Her handsome boyfriend? Or will she be left alone in the land of the fat girls?

Francesca Lia Block - 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Award Winner
After the death of her father, Laurel is haunted by a legacy of family secrets, hidden shame, and shattered glass. Then, immersing herself in the heady rhythms of a city, she runs away from the past, only to come face-to-face with the demons she wants to avoid.

Cam Phillips' parents have shipped her off to a camp for the overweight where she is to eat controlled portions, endure rigorous exercise, and sleep in a bunk full of girls who'd rather exchange recipes than ghost stories and gossip. It looks like for the next eight weeks, only the issues (and not the food) on Cam's plate will be supersized.

Every teen girl feels pressure from society to be thin. In a real-to-life fictional story, Carlson conveys an important message about self-worth and identity to students tempted to be thin at any cost.

Tayshas Reading List 2006-2007
When red pointe ballet shoes with threatening messages mysteriously pop up, teenage ballerina Kayla wonders if she's in danger. At the same time, she's trying to figure out how to make her un-ballerina-like proportions fit her dream of becoming a professional dancer. Young Adult.

Eric and Sarah have been friends since junior high, when his weight and her scars made them outcasts. In high school, Eric has slimmed and Sarah doesn't let being an outsider hurt her. Now she sits silent in a hospital. Can Eric uncover her secret before it puts them both in danger?

Fifteen-year-old Colie is spending the summer with her eccentric Aunt Mira while her mother travels. Formerly chubby and still insecure, Colie has built a shell around herself. But her summer with her aunt, her aunt's tenant Norman, and her friends at the Last Chance Diner&150teaches her some important lessons about friendship and learning to love yourself.

The author of "Love Undercover" addresses head-on the weight issues that are commonplace for todays teens in this funny yet poignant novel.

Thirteen-year-old Matt Greene is tired of being looked down upon by everyone in his eighth grade class. His best friend Keith, a star basketball player, drives Matt into jealous fits. A girl named Josie enters Matt's life, and she comes to be a voice of wisdom, a sympathetic friend, and the best possible magic for Matt's angst.

Thirteen-year-old Isabelle Lee struggles with an eating disorder while dealing with a turbulent home life and social pressures at school. The author brings a depth of characterization, humor, and a real adolescent's voice to this multileveled story about the desire to be perfect in an imperfect world.

This Michael L. Printz Honor Book and "School Library Journal" Best Book of the Year is an engaging debut--the story of two unlikely friends who meet when a high-school dropout talks a boy out of suicide and who ultimately save each other.

Robin's neighbor Frankie is like walking sex. He's 23, hot, charming, and used to getting what he wants. When Janice, Robin's stepmom, first meets Frankie, they lock eyes with an almost audible sizzle. Not long after, Robin discovers they're having an affair. She is shocked, angry, curious, even jealous--but not really surprised. It's just one more hurtful secret to be kept in this parallel universe of liars.
Surrounded by superficiality, infidelity, and lies, Robin, 15 and a self-described "chunk," has a secret of her own--she can't stay away from Frankie, either. But when a new guy ambles into her life, Robin must find a way to escape her own tangle of deception to capture something real.

Fifteen-year-old Virginia Shreves is sure that she's the weakest link in her high-powered family until her handsome, athletic, star-student brother shockingly falls from grace. Young Adult.

Overweight 15-year-old Tristan, who lives happily with his divorced mother and her boyfriend Frank, suddenly finds that he must deal with intensified criticism about his weight and other aspects of his life, after Franks popular but troubled, nutrition-obsessed daughter moves in.

Hilarious and immediately relatable, this novel about first love, friendship, and self-acceptance tells the story of two teenage girls--both overweight--who meet, then clash, at a weight-loss camp.

""I'm not sure you really want to get into what I did this summer, Mrs. Westland. Sex. Sex is how I spent my summer vacation.""
Megan knows twenty different words for "breasts," and can recite them alphabetically-but she can't remember the last time a guy looked her in the eye first, not the chest
Size matters, as Megan found out in the 5 th grade, when she developed the largest breasts in the class. Now she's 17 and wearing her twin brothers' baggy sweatshirts can't hide the fact-two facts, really. When her summer job at Pancake Palace puts her in close touch with Jake, who smells like "temptation and Ivory soap," Megan wonders if he can like her for herself, not just her body. Can lusty, busty Megan learn to trust Jake -and herself? Megan tells about her summer of sex in somewhat poignant and very funny journal entries to her fa

Veronica May (Big Vee) is a bubbly, gorgeous, confident, eighteen-year-old theater actress from Chester, Arizona. She is also two hundred pounds. She puts off college, her life, and her questions about her mothers death twelve years earlier to care for her widowed father.

Then Daddy announces that hes going to remarry and Veronica feels replaced. She decides, then and there, its time for Big Vee to shine! She escapes Arizona and follows in the footsteps of her mother, who was an aspiring actress, to Hollywood.

Between shifts with a cute co-worker at the local coffee bar, Vee auditions, falls in love, dumps a toxic friend, learns to deal with love and loss, and finally, finds her place in the spotlight.

Fifteen-year-old Lucy Ostego towers over everyone in her small Alaskan town, and their cruelty prompts her to run away. When a crabbing boat crew assumes she's older than she is and invites her to join them for the season, she's thrilled--until her masquerade becomes threatened.

BookPage Notable Title
Jamie is a senior in high school and, like so many kids in that year, doing too much--including trying to change the world--and fighting for her rights as a very fat girl. And not quietly: she's writing a column every week in the paper with her thoughts and fears and gripes. As her column raises all kinds of questions, so too, must she find her own private way in her world, with love popping up in an unexpected place, and satisfaction in her size losing ground to real frustration. Tapping into her own experience losing weight, her training as a psychotherapist, and the current fascination in the media for teens who are trying drastic weight-loss measures including surgery, Susan Vaught's searing and hilarious prose will grip readers of all sizes, leaving them eager to hear more.

Told from teenage Donnies point of view, this brilliant debut novel shows how everything changes when Donnies less-than-perfect family realizes that his sister Karen has an eating disorder.

This humorous young adult take on "Bridget Jones's Diary" introduces Angelica (Angel) Cookson Potts, who loves food, both cooking it and eating it, and plans to become a famous chef. Angel's own recipes are included.

Beverly Is In Hawaii, helping her uncle at his dive shop, learning how to dive and trying to lose weight and get a boyfriend. When Garth, an accomplished diver, shows an interest in her, Beverly is ecstatic, until it turns out Garth is only interested in one thing. Struggling with failing strength from her self-imposed starvation diet, Beverly finds herself in deep trouble when she has to fight Garth off underwater.