Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Shannon Hale’s graphic memoir was already on my list, simply because it’s Shannon Hale, and it’s a memoir, and what’s not to love?  Then my friend Britt told me that I needed to read it sooner rather than later because it was going to speak to me, and so I put it on hold on my daughter’s card.  (Because really, she was going to want to read it too.)  It took forever to come in–it’s new, and it’s Shannon Hale, and every other library patron in the valley seems to have ALSO put it on hold–but come in it did.

And my friend wasn’t kidding.   This spoke to me, people–the uncertainty of not fitting in as an elementary schooler; the difficulty of finding true friends, as well as of being one; even the difficulty of siblings being too wrapped up in their separate adolescences to realize how to be friends to each other.  (And the redhead struggles!  Even those!)  When I read the Author’s Note, I just thought yes! a thousand times yes!

What more can I say?  If you have a girl between the ages of 6 and 16, get her this book–and then read it yourself.  And then, as Shannon Hale says, “we can say to each other, ‘Hey, me too!  Isn’t that something?  To realize I’m not the only one?”