North of Beautiful

Dear reader, I know we've all felt down and depressed about the way we look, going so far as to body-shame ourselves. Media, movies, and television does such a number on both men and women as far as body shape, healthiness, diet fads, perfect skin, make-up, the works. First of all, it's just plain silly to try to fit into a shape/skin that's not truly and uniquely yours; but even more so for people (such as myself) who have no hope at all trying to fit in with the "regular" person displayed on screen. Which is possibly why I love Justina Chen's book North of Beautiful so very, very much.

At first glance, this book could be perceived as the standard coming-of-age-high-school-romance-chick-lit, but it is so much more than that. Chen's remarkable prose is able to take us deeper into the characters and story than just the standard, run of the mill YA chick-lit (of which, do not deny, I am a major fan of). It is always a treat to discover a book within this sometimes ridiculed genre that is so much more than the standard fair.

Terra Cooper struggles daily not just with an overbearing, controlling father and, at first glance, a weak-willed mother, she also bears the brunt of stares wherever she goes. Terra's face displays a port-wine stain birthmark that takes up a sizable amount of her right cheek. Since she was a child, Terra's mother has taken her to Seattle Children's Hospital for various treatments, some incredibly painful, to try to remove the stubborn splotch. And yet, it endures. After too many treatments to count, Terra's father put his foot down. No more treatments, no more money for treatments. When a new laser treatment becomes available, Terra's mother orchestrates a way for the money and Terra to get to Children's without her father knowing. It won't help anyway as Terra has found out over the years. Her birthmark is stubborn and refuses to lighten for anything. But she can't deny her mother, who has only the idea that Terra might be "normal someday" to cling to.

Enter Jacob, interesting Goth boy who Terra literally collides with on her way home from a treatment. Different and interesting, Jacob snags Terra's interest in spite of herself. As the two grow into friends, and beyond, their mothers also connect.

This whole wonderful novel culminates in a trip to China and, of course, empowerment of the best kind. But the real reason I love this book is that Terra changes so much inside, but her birthmark stays. It doesn't magically go away. The laser treatment doesn't work. She doesn't find a special concealer that makes it invisible. She begins to learn to live with it. As someone, among many millions of people who I'm sure feel the similar about their "shortcomings," learning to live with my limp and the male-patterned baldness (from radiation treatment years and years ago) has been the most trying experience of all of my vast experiences. And I'm still learning. Everyday, I learn something new about acceptance of myself. This, dear reader, is what Chen so amazingly illustrates in this novel. I think it is beyond important for all of us to read books just like this one, so that we might understand that, yes, we are all different. But we are also the same in our striving towards acceptance and a place in the world.

The mighty morphin' Animorphs!

I don't know if you can tell, dear reader, but I have kind of a thing for rereading. Not every serious reader (or casual reader for that matter) believes in rereading. Some see it as a waste of time, time they could be using to read new books. But I, dear reader, am a big fan of rereading. I think that I get something out of the book each time I read it. Whether I've waited 10 years to read it again (The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen or The China Garden by Liz Berry) or I read it every year (Harry Potter by JK Rowling or the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix), I get something new and different out of every reread. So a year and a half ago, when I decided to reread a series that was one of my very favorites as a young teenager, I didn't realize it would take me a YEAR and a HALF to finish. This is because I decided to only read the Animorphs books before bed, so I could focus on a different/new book during the day.


Animorphs. Animal morphers. K.A. Applegate's wonderful science fiction vision (more that 60 books fill out this children's series) is an amazing mix of sci-fi, politics, adventure, horror, and coming-of-age. The basic premise is as follows: an alien Andalite crash lands on Earth. Right by a mall (of course an alien would crash land by a mall... this IS a series about five teenagers...), and Jake, Cassie, Rachel, Tobias, and Marco watch the crash and try to aid the alien afterwards. This Andalite, Elfangor, gives these five teens the power to morph, to turn into any animal they can touch and acquire the DNA of. He doesn't give them this power just for funsies though. Another alien race has already touched down on Earth and is taking hosts, quietly bent on devastating the human population. These aliens are Yeerks, and they are parasites that take over the brain by entering in through the ear canal and physically surrounding the brain. Creepy to the extreme. The Andalites and Yeerks have been fighting a bitter war for years, and the human race is the Yeerks' latest target. The Animorphs are quite possibly Earth's last hope at survival.

As a young teenager - suffering from many body images issues, and a fairly severe limp from a rare spinal birth defect - the idea of morphing into an animal, any animal, was the coolest thing I'd ever heard of. Who wouldn't want to morph a horse and thunder across a field? Or a cat, with the best balance and grace imaginable? This is probably the initial reason this series appealed to me. As an adult, however, this young adult series is wonderful for so many other reasons. First, all the kids in it are all different. They are not all white teenagers who like to shop (an assumption one could make as they ran into a dying alien by the mall). They come from a variety of backgrounds, ethnicities, and interests. But, Marco (Jake's best friend), Rachel (Jake's cousin and Cassie's best friends), Cassie, Jake, and Tobias (the bully-magnet new kid who sort of glommed onto Jake) just happened to be walking by Elfangor's crash site together at just the right moment in time to change the course of human history.

Applegate's Animorphs series does not gloss over the darker points of fighting a war. It does not shy away from the psychological effect of having an amazing power and having to use it to combat an enemy that was virtually unknown to the five teenagers who quickly take on the role of a guerilla force. And, for these reasons, I love it. So many children and teenagers battle their own psychological issues, whether caused by an event or just from their natural brain chemistry. Having a series of books talking plainly about such issues (depression, PTSD, insomnia, etc.) is so, so needed.

Tonight, before I go to sleep, I'll finish the final few pages of the final book, The Beginning. It might be another 15 years before I read the Animorphs series again, but it is so worth it to be reminded of what good children's literature is.