Social and Emotional Wellness: Eating Disorders

Asking for help is only the first step. Jennifer can't go on like this -- binging, purging, starving, and all while trying to appear like she's got it all together. But when she finally confesses her secret to her parents, and is hospitalized at the Samuel Tuke Center, her journey is only beginning. As Jennifer progresses through her treatment, she learns to recognize her relationship with food, friends, and family -- and how each is healthy and unhealthy. She has to learn to trust herself and her own instincts, but that's easier than it sounds. She has to believe -- after many years of being a believarexic. Using her trademark dark humor and powerful emotion, J.J. Johnson tells an inspiring story that is based on her own experience when she was hospitalized for an eating disorder as a teenager. The innovative format, in which Jennifer's story is told through blank verse and prose, with changes in tense and voice, and using forms, workbooks, and journal entries, mirrors the protagonist's progress toward a healthy body and mid. To find out more about the book, the disorder, and lots more visit www.believarexic.com.

Do you ever get hungry? Too hungry to eat? Holly's older sister, Giselle, is self-destructing. Haunted by her love-deprived relationship with her late father, this once strong role model and medical student, is gripped by anorexia. Holly, a track star, struggles to keep her own life in balance while coping with the mental and physical deterioration of her beloved sister. Together, they can feel themselves slipping and are holding on for dear life. This honest look at the special bond between sisters is told from the perspective of both girls, as they alternate narrating each chapter. Gritty and often wryly funny, Skinny explores family relationships, love, pain, and the hunger for acceptance that drives all of us.

“Every war has turning points and every person too.” Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy. As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way. A riveting and astonishing story.

She feels like a creature out of a fairy tale; a girl who discovers that her bones are really made out of stone, that her skin is really as thin as glass, that her hair is brittle as straw, that her tears have dried up so that she cries only salt. Maybe that's why it doesn't hurt when she presses hard enough to begin bleeding: it doesn't hurt, because she's not real anymore. Sethie Weiss is hungry, a mean, angry kind of hunger that feels like a piece of glass in her belly.nbsp;She's managed to get down to 111 pounds and knows that with a little more hard work--a few more meals skipped, a few more snacks vomited away--she can force the number on the scale even lower. She will work on her body the same way she worked to get her perfect grades, to finish her college applications early, to get her first kiss from Shaw, the boy she loves, the boy who isn't quite her boyfriend. nbsp; Sethie will not allow herself one slip, not one bad day, not one break in concentration.nbsp;Her body is there for her to work on when everything and everyone else--her best friend, her schoolwork, and Shaw--are gone. nbsp; From critically acclaimed writer Alyssa B. Sheinmel comes an unflinching and unparalleled portrayal of one girl's withdrawal, until she is sinking like a stone into her own illness, her own loneliness--her own self.

How often do you find yourself looking in the mirror? And smiling at what you see? More likely, you're thinking what you see is: Fat, Ugly, Skinny, Round, Stacked or Flat, Bad or Good. From reality television to tabloid headlines, we're all surrounded by weight and discussion of weight. In this collection, a stellar lineup of YA writers sound off on body image., self-esteem, diets, eating disorders, boys, fashion magazines, and why trying on jeans is a bad experience for everyone. There are eight powerful short stories and six moving personal essays from authors whose works include two New York Times bestsellers, a Los Angeles TImes Book Prize, and a Printz Honor; an appendix offers book, movie, and music recommendations. (And in case you're still wondering, No this book does not make you look fat.)