A review by protoman21
Deenie by Judy Blume

4.0

This is a great book about a girl overcoming a physical limitation. Deenie is a sweet girl who deals with a lot of common issues to junior high kids: boys, friends, fitting in, peer pressure, but on top of all that she discovers that she has scoliosis and has to be fitted with a brace. This changes everything, or at least, it seems like it will, but thankfully life goes on and all that changes is her perspective. Her relationships with her parents are key to this story, especially her with mother. Her mother has expectations that Deenie will become a model and her curvature of the spine causes this dream to be ruined, or at least put on hold. Deenie wasn't sure about the modeling to begin with, so this isn't a big deal to her, but it is devastating for her mother who always thought of modeling as Deenie's one chance to be special and achieve more than she did. I like that her father and the doctors recognize that Deenie is handling the problem better than her mother and give her credit for being strong and brave.