Second book post 2

"Last Red Light Before We're There" by Matt de la Pena is a long chapter about a boy and his family and how they deal with how the daughter, and Matt's sister, Ana, is very sick with anorexia. She does not live at home anymore and the fact that she's so sick and had such a distorted view of herself tears her family down everyday. Matt and his mom constantly sit inside and around Ana's bedroom with everything on the inside untouched just to remind them of how she used to be. I liked this chapter because it talked about the troubles the whole family goes through everyday, and not just the person who is struggling with the eating disorder. You usually hear about families who deal with someone who is overweight, but in this case it was cool to see the perspective from a family who has the opposite problem.

"Sweet 16 Plus" by Wendy McClure is about a young girl who was always bigger for her age. She had to shop at stores for women when she was only the age of 14. Obviously, these styles did not fit her taste but she had to adapt and come up with her own style in order to feel confident. Unfortunately, at the end of the chapter, Wendy still does not feel happy about her body because she ends up stealing her mother's credit card and buying some clothes with it and creating her own designs based off of that. She didn't fit in physically with everyone else, and now she did not fit in in a fashion point of view, which is a tough thing to deal with if you are middle school- early high school age for most girls who are just starting to understand their bodies. Reading about this because it gave me a greater appreciation for being able to fit in more mainstream sizes made for girls my age.

"Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" by Sarra Manning is about a girl named Cath who works at an ice cream parlor on a pier and gets stuck working with an unconfident, nerdy girl named Rosie. The long chapter goes in depth about Rosie's transformation to someone who has good style, and good people skills due to Cath's teachings. Rosie has a large chest and Cath does not, and this actually causes some problems between the two because they both have issues with how their bodies look. I think it's important to remember that everyone is built differently and has different features emphasized. The lesson in this story is that confidence is key, and implants are not going to solve a problem of small boobs.

The last chapter in this section is called "Tale of a Half-Pint" by Margo Rabb. Margo has always been the shortest of all of her friends and has looked significantly younger than everyone her age. She could get into the 12-and-under group at the movie theater until the time she was 21 years old! She would try and look older by wearing heels and makeup, but she just looked silly because her presence did not show the maturity that she was dressing to display. She was always concerned about her height, but then her dad got sick, and her mom got sick and ended up passing away. Now, Margo has put her life in perspective and is happy that she got a long, full childhood where she valued things other than growing up so fast and actually did things that children do. After her mom died, she had a much greater appreciation for the bigger picture of life and less of the picky details that used to concern her before. She has turned her sad situation into something beautiful.