Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling

July 21, 2014
Two girls struggle with Crohn's disease in this moving verse novel from Frank (Lucky Stars). When Chessie winds up in the emergency room after a painful bout of stomach pain and an embarrassing "moment" with a crush, her immediate concern is living through her mortification. During her hospital stay, Chessie grapples not only with tubes up her nose, dietary restrictions, and mood-influencing steroids but also with the psychological effects of being diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. Her assertive hospital roommate, Shannon, who suffers from a more aggressive form of Crohn's, makes Chessie's diagnosis easier by cracking jokes and airing her grievances, indirectly encouraging Chessie to follow suit. Frank's decision to split the narrative vertically on the page (the middle line represents the curtain between Chessie and Shannon's beds) doesn't always pay off, sometimes distracting from rather than enhancing the verse. But the girls' anger and palpable fear ("How do you know who you are when you can't trust your own body?") contribute to a raw, unsentimental perspective on the fight to keep an illness from overpowering one's identity. Ages 12âup. Agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.

Starred review from June 15, 2014
Using innovative page design, Frank crafts an unflinching look at illness.In the emergency room at 4 a.m., Chess is whisked into invasive medical testing-a colonoscopy-and then into a hospital room. She's had severe gastrointestinal symptoms before, but this is her first diagnosis: the chronic, autoimmune disorder Crohn's, an inflammatory bowel disease. Her roommate, Shannon, has Crohn's, too. Their conversations-acerbic, worried, snippy-progress down each page in fast-reading columns of verse. When the curtain between their beds is closed, a vertical line appears between Chess' text column and Shannon's, emphasizing the room's physicality and restriction. A doctor calls Crohn's "tough and / unpredictable"; Chess finds it disgusting ("gross green bubbles / glub up from my insides, / slip down the tube"), painful (her insides "burn") and humiliating-especially the mortifying incident that sent her to the emergency room. Chess laughs until she cries, and then "the rage flows, / shocking and unstoppable / as shit." Her future holds prescriptions, side effects, food restrictions, flare-ups-and remissions. Frank's portrayal of chronic, mostly invisible sickness is spot-on. Illness isn't metaphor, it isn't a consequence, it isn't a literary vehicle-it's a precarious and uprooting fact of life, inconvenient and enraging, but not the end of the world.Riveting, humanizing and real. (Verse fiction. 13-17)

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May 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-A realistic fiction novel about how two very different girls deal with Crohn's disease. Shannon is a veteran of hospitals and treatments and Francesca is newly diagnosed. The novel is told in two voices in free verse poetry; a line down the center of the page indicates their separation by a hospital room curtain, and the poems are meant to be read across the curtain rather than down each column, which may take readers time to decipher. The poetic stylization of the novel is satisfactory, giving readers quick, emotion-soaked impressions, but makes the plot difficult to follow at first. The character development for both girls is somewhat tenuous; Chessa's voice is the stronger of the two, and we learn she is hiding a horrible secret. Shannon's voice is much less developed, which makes it hard to know and empathize with her. The poetic style of the novel may be attractive to readers who are intimidated by a hefty page count. An additional purchase.-Patricia Feriano, Our Lady of Mercy School, Potomac, MD

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2014
Grades 8-12 Teen Chess is new to the Crohn's disease club. Shannon is a veteran with a scrappy hospital persona and an ear pierce for each surgery endured. While Chess is trying to decipher the ER chart to indicate which bow-tied face best represents her pain, Shannon is a squeaky wheel with no patience for new patients. Frank instructs her audience to read according to a visual device: a vertical line down the page represents the curtain separating the girls in their roomand which girl is speaking. Chess is the novice here, unaccustomed to hospital visitors, steroid reactions, and the overwhelming vulnerability of a chronic ailment that includes intense abdominal cramping and diarrhea. She also expects to make upcoming college visits and simply to live life as she planned it. Shannon has suffered for years and has been deeply impacted by a crippling pain that attacks at will. Through Frank's narrative in verse, readers vividly live hospital life as they follow both Chess' awakening to and Shannon's reality of this aching prognosis.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)