Sweethearts

Author: Sara Zarr

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publication Year: 2008

Most of the readers will be: Middle school and high school girls.

Reader's Advisory: For another book on a girl struggling with weight issues try Erin Dionne's Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies.

Summary:
Jennifer Harris had a difficult childhood. She was mocked for being overweight, her mother was rarely home since she was working and going to nursing school, and she had only one friend. But Cameron Quick was such a good friend that the bad stuff almost didn't matter. Cameron made her life bearable. Then one day Cameron disappeared and the kids at school told Jennifer that he was dead. Her mother didn't deny it, so that is what she has believed all these years.
A lot has changed since then. Jennifer Harris is now Jenna Vaughn. Her mother is remarried and working as a nurse. They live in a nice house and Jenna goes to a new school. She has friends and a boyfriend. And she's not overweight anymore.
What will happen to Jenna when a very much alive Cameron Quick steps back into her life?

My favorite passage:

Right before the summer between second and third grade I was in the back of my mom's brown Geo Prism, which was parked in front of the ugly building where we rented a one-bedroom apartment. Mom had gone inside to trade her Village Inn uniform for her nursing school scrubs before taking me to the babysitter. I remember that I had a library book about possums and I liked the way they walked on mossy logs and peered out from holes in trees and how their paws looked like little human hands. I tried saying it without a lisp. Possum, I whispered, putting my tongue behind my teeth the way I'd learned in speech therapy. Mossy possum paws. I'd be ready next time Jordana pointed to Sam Simpson and said, "Who's that, Fattifer? I can't remember his name." She made me nervouse, and it came out Tham Thimthon no matter how much I'd practice at home.
I didn't want to think about Jordana, so I opened my lunch box where I knew there was a plastic bag half full of crackers that I'd taken from a first-grader's lunch when she wasn't looking. Stealing food was a bad habit, more of a compusion really, and not only did I want a snack but also I needed to destroy the evidence, a process I enjoyed: holding the crackers in my mouth and feeling the hard, salty crunchiness dissolve into a slightly sweet mush. When I reached in my lunch box to get them, I found a small white cardboard box that I knew for a fact had not been there at lunch.
I slipped the lid off the box and lifted up a small square of cotton to see a ring with a silvery band and sparkly blue stone. Underneath the ring was a piece of paper that had been folded, folded, folded, and folded again to fit the box. I opened it. It was a drawing of a house with a fence around it, and a tree. Pencil-line rays from a round sun beamed down on two stick figures holding hands. Beneath the picture in a messy second-grade scrawl, it read:
To Jennifer,
I love you.
From Cameron Quick.
My mom got back in the car then, tossing her books onto the passenger seat and slamming the door. I watched her eyes in the rearview mirror as she asked, "Whatcha got there, kiddo?"
I closed my hand around the ring. "Nothing." (pg 6-7)

What I really think:
It took me a few chapters to get into this book, but then I was really hooked. I think that most of us have vivid memories of people and events from our childhood that in some way have shaped our lives. And as a teenager, when you are trying to decide what kind of adult you are going to be, you can wonder what to do with the feelings you have about your childhood self.
I like the way Zarr deals with Jenna's eating problems. The descriptions of how much she likes food are so convincing I started thinking more about how food tastes and feels myself. I began to really understand the comfort Jenna gets from eating. But when Jenna isn't eating for comfort she does try to stay thin in a reasonably healthy way: eating small portions of good food and exercising. I'm glad she has found a way to be happier with herself without going to the other extreme and not eating.