Perk!: The Story of a Teenager with Bulimia
Grade 6-9?Eating helps Perk forget her nervousness. A whole basket of crackers, a cheese omelet, large shake, muffins, and a wedge of cake smother the hurt when her father calls her a "fat ass" in a fit of temper. She fails to please her gorgeous mother, so she eats. The guy she's been crazy about all year proves to be a creep, so she eats. Finally, guilt and weight gain set in. She discovers that vomiting quiets the voice in her head that screams, "You're fat!" Then her baby sister almost drowns while Perk is throwing up instead of watching her. At the hospital, a doctor also examines Perk. Her sunken eyes, skeletal frame, and blistered throat reveal her bulimia, and she, too, is admitted. With the help of a caring teacher, a new friend, and a support group for adolescents with eating disorders, the teen begins her recovery. Hall conveys Perk's horrible cycle of gorging and throwing up in a way that allows readers to feel her hopeless pain and shame. However, while the teen's eventual recovery saves the book from bleakness, it seems too easy. In the last chapter, she has managed two days without throwing up. In the epilogue, Perk seems almost totally well. Although it is one year later, and Perk admits it "gets really hard," a one-chapter recovery seems incredibly fast after 14 chapters of pain. Still, readers may close the last page with the realization that hope exists.?Leigh Ann Jones, Gee Jr. High, Pilot Point, TXCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.