Scan barcode
sunshineariel's review against another edition
3.0
This was a pretty good book. I will definitely look for more by this author, as I enjoyed her writing. At first the format was a bit confusing, the way the chapters were preceded by small sections of a second story, the book that the characters were writing. The ending was sad, but it was foreshadowed throughout, and you know that things turn out okay for the main character, so it's not as shocking or disturbing. I think the character development was fairly weak, and there were parts that left me wanting a bit more detail or explanation. But overall it was a good read, I wanted to reach the end, and I could picture the main character as a real person.
cookiemedic's review against another edition
2.0
This book had a very promising beginning but I really don’t know what happened. I simply couldn’t bring myself to give a full 3 stars (if 2.5 was available, I would have done that)... I simply didn’t like the story or the way it was written. Maybe if I had been raised with a horse in the Northeast in the 70’s, I would have enjoyed it more.
larabobara's review against another edition
5.0
When I was growing up, I had to go to a special doctor an hour away from my hometown each year - or maybe twice a year, I can't remember - for checkups because one of a slight curvature in my spine, or "mild scoliosis", that the doctors feared would become more pronounced as I got older. Consequently, I was often cautioned to be careful when I was playing, with the threat being that I could end up in a back brace.
This threat was always kind of vague. My parents made it sound really awful, and I suppose they had to do that to keep me from attempting to do a cartwheel (not allowed when you have mild scoliosis!), but in my mind it wasn't a big deal. (Little did they know I was a chicken who was too scared of falling over anyway.) I just imagined a back brace to be like a big piece of elastic, kind of like those pull-on braces athletes wear on their knees or wrists sometimes.
This is all a very long way of saying that I found this book fascinating because it involves a pre-teen girl who actually DID have to wear the not-so-dreaded back brace. And you know what? It sounds like wearing a brace really sucks.
That's not all the book is about, though. It's a lovely tale that could be categorized as much as an exploration of female friendship as it could a coming-of-age story, and I enjoyed it immensely.
This threat was always kind of vague. My parents made it sound really awful, and I suppose they had to do that to keep me from attempting to do a cartwheel (not allowed when you have mild scoliosis!), but in my mind it wasn't a big deal. (Little did they know I was a chicken who was too scared of falling over anyway.) I just imagined a back brace to be like a big piece of elastic, kind of like those pull-on braces athletes wear on their knees or wrists sometimes.
This is all a very long way of saying that I found this book fascinating because it involves a pre-teen girl who actually DID have to wear the not-so-dreaded back brace. And you know what? It sounds like wearing a brace really sucks.
That's not all the book is about, though. It's a lovely tale that could be categorized as much as an exploration of female friendship as it could a coming-of-age story, and I enjoyed it immensely.
More...