Dear TBR:
Since “sick lit” was coined in 2012 in critical response to books like John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, I have been firmly on the anti-illness book train. This isn’t to say that I didn’t believe that disease or illness should be covered in books for young adults, but the proliferation of the genre – even when I was a teen – made me uneasy. I remember SO many novels where the focus on disease was more dramatic and lacked… appropriate care to me, especially when the illness was major like cancer or a major mental health challenge which led to self-harm. If you’ve lost someone you love to cancer, or to the battle with mental illness, you choose your books with greater care, I think. Books about tweens instead of teens, and books about illnesses which don’t typically end in a death have been fewer, until more recently. Unlike cancer or self-harm, chronic illness is… uncomfortable, intense, intermittent, terrifying, grief-provoking, depressing, debilitating, and doesn’t end until death. There’s no comparison, obviously, among diseases, and I am not at all saying that there’s some hierarchy which needs to be observed in covering them, but I am saying that I feel that the more windows and mirrors and sliding doors we can provide to the reader to carefully and compassionately reflect and educate readers on the experiences of the unwell, the better – and for best results, I look for Own Voices writers. They seem to be best at depicting the loneliness and reality that often accompanies illness. These recent books fit the bill for me:
CHICKENPOX, by Remy Lai
Ah, chickenpox, my old nemesis, and the reason I have to get Shingrix shots every seven years. I had chickenpox badly when I was young, and hallucinated clothes-wearing mice all around my room, my fevers were so high. Obviously, I had to read this book.
At twelve, Abby’s a fan of school. She actually enjoys it, because at school, there are her friends – mature people there who don’t start nonsense over nothing, and a place for her to shine as someone other than a sister. For Abby, school is a break from having to be The Oldest. When her siblings get into messes, Abby often feels that she’s held responsible – and if anyone is crying or yelling because of her, she’s reminded that she should have known better, done better, or somehow otherwise been better. It’s a lot of pressure she didn’t ask for.
Unfortunately, siblings can bring out the worst in us, and one afternoon, after witnessing Abby be both mean and aggressive with her younger siblings Abby’s friends Julie and Monica…leave. Julie tells Abby she behaved like a fourth grader. A humiliated Abby avoids Monica and Julie for days, and soon has only one person to talk to at school, a boy who will talk to anyone. Unfortunately, Julie and Monica’s visit to her house meant they shared more than an awkward experience. It also means that they shared a virus. When first one of Abby’s friends, and then her youngest siblings start feeling run down and rashy, the whole Lai family has to isolate. In a few days, Abby shows chickenpox, too, and the reality that she’s going to be stuck in the same house with her siblings – for two weeks – is horrendous. She’s got to find a way to mend fences with her friends… but that’s pretty hard when there’s always someone screaming, jumping around, stealing her comic books, or crying in the background. As Abby’s desperation rises, frustrations proliferate. Abby feels like she’s going out of her mind.
The bright, manga-style graphic illustrations (including Abby with her eyes popping out of her head sometimes from frustration) short time frame (two weeks, the amount of time Abby has to quarantine), and rapidly rising stakes make this book a quick-paced, fascinating read. There’s clear information about chicken pox in the book which educate the reader and take the disease from a shadowy thing to be avoided into a temporary condition that can be understood. Remy Lai is a Chinese Australian writer who depicts a lively and vibrant Indonesian family and community, giving readers a delightful sampling of different culture, and the knowledge of the similarities all siblings share.
ANIANA DEL MAR JUMPS IN, Jasminne Mendez
Writers freely mine their lives and experiences for their fiction, but I’ve struggled to write personal experiences of illness. Jasminne Mendez writes here about Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, an autoimmune disease much like the one she deals with. This book resonated with me strongly. A recipient of the Pura Belpré Author Honor Award, and four starred reviews, yet I still cannot say enough good about it, or that it has reached as many readers as it ought.
Aniana lives in Galveston, and has heard from her mother many stories of the Dominican Republic, its beauty, and its heroines, one of whom she’s named for. Aniana has learned what it is to fight – she’s fought her mother’s nerves and fears around her being on a swim team, she’s fought for her place there, too. Unfortunately, she’s recently started fighting her body. Aniana can’t understand why every time she swims now, her knees swell up like a baseball, why her skin cracks and she’s always rashy. Her father takes her swimming and is her biggest supporter, but her mother thinks swimming is A Problem. She fears water because she lost her younger brother in a hurricane, and her fear has driven the course of the whole family’s life. Aniana’s father gets around her with a what-Mami-doesn’t-know-won’t-hurt-her philosophy, but that comes back to bite them all in the backside, as Papi works for the Coast Guard and is often away for long stretches. Aniana has lied to her mother for a long, long time, but when the illness and the pain don’t quit, she can’t lie to her anymore. Her hyper-religious mother blames swimming, lying, and a lack of ‘honor-thy-father-and-thy-mother’ for Aniana’s pain, rashes, and inflammation. Her father thinks time will fix everything, turn back the clock, and make Aniana exactly as she was again. They’re both wrong, and they both end up hurting Aniana worse than the eventual diagnosis does. Fortunately, Aniana’s best friend’s mother is a rock in her life, who simply listens to her. As the secrets Aniana’s been keeping come out, and the shouting, slammed doors, and silences drive her again and again to the only adult in her life who can provide a shoulder, Aniana begins to slowly realize that this is her life now – but how she’ll go forward with it is up to her.
Sometimes having a book articulate ideas you haven’t yet learned to think, no matter your age, is a help you didn’t know you needed. I hope this book gets into the hands of all kinds of people who deal with chronic illness. The unrhymed haiku and tanka, shape poems, and emotional clarity offered in the pages take the reader deep into Aniana’s emotions, while helping them to understand and empathize with her disease and her fears of having lost control of her own person and decisions. Aniana’s mother’s contributions to the book were difficult to read – and hers was a family who didn’t believe in talk therapy, but as they finally move towards that support and healing, Aniana’s rise to the surface after nearly drowning in familial history and grief from her disease is a gradual, hopeful process, allowing the reader to see that ‘different’ doesn’t have to be ‘worse,’ and sometimes it can even be a new form of good.
GUT REACTION, Kirby Larson & Quinn Wyatt
When I heard about this mother-daughter author pairing, I knew it would be an amazing one. Debut author Quinn Wyatt struggled with Crohn’s Disease from the time she was a very young child, and doctors only came up with a diagnosis when she was sixteen. Her mother, Kirby Larson, was able to provide the other side of this IBS disease to the reader – the worrying and fears of parental reaction, as well as her experience as a well-published children’s book writer. This book is a fast, lighthearted bildungsroman about loss and change – and disease, which still somehow manages to be fun.
Fourteen-year-old Tess Medina loved her father, and so loves the hobby he once enjoyed – baking. An accomplished baker, she’s happiest in the kitchen, where she can remember her dad and his baking aphorisms, and gain strength from those memories to carry her through her first days at a new school, the nerve-wracking process of making new friends, and all the stressful challenges of middle school. Tess isn’t just carrying her father’s memory for her, but also for her little sister, Gracie, who is so young she’s already forgetting him. Tess is determined that he, and the long-ago voicemail message of his she still has, will keep him in the family’s hearts forever.
When Tess’s baking begins to cause her vicious stomach aches, she’s confused – but determined not to let it, or anything else, slow her roll. She’s all about sharing her baking with her new friends, and remembering her father. Tess is used to powering through emotional pain, so she’s sure she can manage stomach pain, too. As her friendliness pulls a good-hearted group of friends around her, Tess joins a cooking competition, eager to challenge herself for a win — and do her father proud, even if the Knife, as she calls her stomach pain, is determined to stab her at every opportunity. She’ll just keep going – she has to. It’s necessary for Grace. For her father’s memory. And, for herself.
Unfortunately, to avoid hurting, Tess has begun to avoid eating. She’s lost weight, she’s losing focus, and on the day of the contest, she’s terrified she’s losing her grip. All she’s wanted is to win, and do her dad proud, but one by one, the things she’s been trying to power through overpower her. In the end, Tess is stronger than she realizes… strong enough to face her friends, and to face her truths. Some things there’s no way to power through. It turns out that accepting this is… the key to winning after all.
For this topic I also read John Schu’s LOUDER THAN HUNGER, this year’s Schneider Family Book Award winner, but didn’t want to write about it today. It’s a difficult, painful, beautiful book about an eating disorder, also written in blank verse. I may be able to put into words what I want to say about it next time. Or, maybe, this is enough.
Many dreams were deferred by these characters’ illnesses. No more clear skin and escaping siblings, swimming with Olympic coaches, baking or eating freely. Bodies out of control is part of adolescence, but when it comes with illness, it’s even worse. I feel like the best thing that books about illness do for readers is to allow readers to see people fighting to save what they love. Often in real life, having an illness – even a temporary one like chicken pox, is just like being hit with a wave that takes you under and rolls you around and spits you out. Reading how people deal with chronic illness and come out advocating for themselves and figuring out a new normal is hopeful and important – and I hope these books give that experience to every reader who comes across them.
Fresh onto the TBR:
- Hemlock & Silver, T. Kingfisher
- The Gentleman & His Vowsmith, Rebecca Ide
- Arcana Academy, Elise Kova
Until the next book, 📖
Still A Constant Reader
