Judy Lohden is a sixteen year old girl who’s starting out at a new elite performing arts school and she has all the drama that goes along with that situation–making new friends, finding her niche, liking a boy, wondering if a boy likes her, going to parties, facing peer pressure. All the usual sort of things, except for one thing: Judy is a little person, which amplifies everything.<\/p>\n
Instead of just being “the new girl”, she’s the new dwarf<\/i>.<\/p>\n
While most of Judy’s classmates act awkwardly around her, a few people don’t seem to make a big deal out of Judy’s being a little person. It just so happens that one of the ones who doesn’t make a big deal about it is the boy Judy has a crush on.<\/p>\n
Score!<\/p>\n
Life seems to be going exactly as Judy wishes it when she auditions straight into Senior Voice as a Junior (which means she’ll be in the same class as her crush, Kyle), when Kyle offers to take her home after school, when Kyle wants to sleep with her.<\/p>\n
But her “everything’s-going-my-way” life comes to a sudden stop when IT happens. <\/p>\n
It’d be bad enough if it had happened to anyone–it’s even worse because Judy’s a dwarf, and therefore pretty recognizable.<\/p>\n
Judy takes off to a sketchy motel where she hides away from her family, her friends, and the media.<\/p>\n
This is where Big Girl Small<\/i> opens: with Judy in her motel room, playing over the events of the school year again and again.<\/p>\n
I don’t know exactly how to sum up this book, or how to express my feelings regarding it. <\/p>\n
I liked how the story was told: in first person, flipping back and forth between the present (in the motel) and the past (during the school year). Judy’s voice portrays what she is: a smart but still definitely teenaged girl.<\/p>\n
The storyline was coherent, was engaging in a “morbid curiosity” sort of way.<\/p>\n
The content was… overwhelming.<\/p>\n
This isn’t a YA novel, but it’s similar to YA in that it’s full of tense topics and shocking actions. There’s sex, underage drinking, marijuana use, lying… and, um, gang-banging.<\/p>\n
All of this is treated as completely normative, except for the last bit, which is sort-of discouraged (by way of encouraging boys to homosexual encounters.)<\/p>\n
Which is why…<\/p>\n
I can’t really say what I think of this book, or whether I would ever recommend it to anyone. It’s definitely a very mature<\/i> book–but I’m not sure that it has enough redeeming value (even in terms of entertainment value) to overlook the “mature” content. <\/p>\n
\n
Rating:<\/b> ?? 2 Question Marks
\nCategory:<\/b>YA-like adult novel
\nSynopsis:<\/b> Judy Lohden (a little person) is hiding out in a motel after a scandal disrupts her junior year of high school.
\nRecommendation:<\/b> I don’t think I’d recommend this, but I’m not sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Judy Lohden is a sixteen year old girl who’s starting out at a new elite performing arts school and she has all the drama that goes along with that situation–making new friends, finding her niche, liking a boy, wondering if a boy likes her, going to parties, facing peer pressure. All the usual sort of … Read more Book Review: “Big Girl Small” by Rachel DeWoskin<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,368,702,917],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7775"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}