Veronica struggles to balance softball, friends, and family turmoil in this new honest and heartfelt middle grade novel by Jen Petro-Roy, Life in the Balance.
Veronica Conway has been looking forward to trying out for the All-Star softball team for years. She's practically been playing the game since she was a baby. She should have this tryout on lock.
Except right before tryouts, Veronica’s mom announces that she’s entering rehab for alcoholism, and her dad tells her that they may not be able to afford the fees needed to be on the team.
Veronica decides to enter the town talent show in an effort to make her own money, but along the way discovers a new hobby that leads her to doubt her feelings for the game she thought she loved so much.
Is her mom the only one learning balance, or can Veronica find a way to discover what she really wants to do with her life?
Before she had an eating disorder, twelve-year-old Riley was many things: an aspiring artist, a runner, a sister, and a friend. But now, from inside the inpatient treatment center where she's receiving treatment for anorexia, it's easy to forget all of that. Especially since under the influence of her eating disorder, Riley alienated her friends, abandoned her art, turned running into something harmful, and destroyed her family's trust. If Riley wants her life back, she has to recover. Part of her wants to get better. As she goes to therapy, makes friends in the hospital, and starts to draw again, things begin to look up. But when her roommate starts to break the rules, triggering Riley's old behaviors and blackmailing her into silence, Riley realizes that recovery will be even harder than she thought. She starts to think that, even if she does recover, there's no way she'll stay recovered once she leaves the hospital and is faced with her dieting mom, the school bully, and her gymnastics-star sister.
This nonfiction self-help book for young listeners with disordered eating and body-image problems delivers real talk about eating disorders and body image, tools and information for recovery, and suggestions for dealing with the media messages that contribute so much to disordered eating. You Are Enough answers questions like these: What are eating disorders? What types of treatment are available for eating disorders? What is anxiety? How can you relax? What is cognitive reframing? Why are measurements like BMI flawed and arbitrary? What is imposter syndrome? How do our role models affect us? How do you deal with body changes? . . . just to name a few. Many eating-disorder books are written in a way that leaves many people out of the eating-disorder conversation, but this book is written with a special eye to inclusivity so that people of any gender, socioeconomic group, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or chronic illness can benefit.
Evie's older sister Cilla is gone. Their parents sent her away to a strict boarding school after she got pregnant during her junior year of high school-because getting pregnant is not something the Morgan girls are supposed to do. They're supposed to go to church and eat fish on Fridays. They're supposed to be good little Catholics. But Evie can't believe her parents could be that cruel, and she doesn't understand why Cilla isn't responding to her almost daily letters-letters about the school play she didn't get cast in, the distance that's growing between her best friends, and the possibility that she's developing some decidedly un-Catholic feelings about the new girl in her class. So when the other kids at school find out about her crush, Evie sets out to find her sister, convinced that Cilla is the only one who can tell her if she should follow her heart and risk getting kicked out of her family, too, or if should start questioning her family and her faith...
