CM Magazine: Walking a Thin Line.

________________ CM . . . . Volume IV Number 15 . . . . March 27, 1998

cover Walking a Thin Line.
Sylvia McNicoll.
Richmond Hill, ON: Scholastic Canada, 1997.
220 pp., paper, $4.99
ISBN 0-590-12379-3.

Subject Headings:
Anorexia nervosa-Juvenile fiction.
Body image-Juvenile fiction.
Self-perception-Juvenile fiction.

Grades 7 - 9 / Ages 12 - 14.
Review by Marsha Kaiserman.
** /4

excerpt:

"I played the losing game too. I joined a health club and Weight Whippers. I thought when I lost some weight I'd be beautiful and then I'd find true love."
I reached into my back pocket now and unfolded a magazine version of the bus shelter ad. "Like this guy and girl here wearing Ts jeans. Sure these are beautiful people. They have clear perfect skin, and terrific mouths - but look closely at their bodies. Aren't they really too thin."

Lauren and Andrea are successful students with a problem; they think that they are too fat, and so they decide to lose weight, but Andrea goes too far and becomes anorexic, winding up in the hospital. Lauren learns her lesson and, in the public speaking finals, uses their joint experience to provide a moral lesson.

Walking a Thin Line is another in Scholastic Books on-going, untitled series of moral tales for today's adolescents. Sylvia McNicoll, the author of this particular moral tale, has put together an interesting, well-written story that should hold the reader's attention. McNicoll's treatment of perceived overweight and the impact it can have on adolescents is sensitive and comforting without being preachy.

Recommended.

Marsha Kaiserman is Head of Monographs Cataloguing at Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) in Ottawa.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - MARCH 27, 1998.