Louder Than Hunger
$19.00
by John Schu
The instant New York Times bestseller!
“Every so often a book comes along that is so brave and necessary, it extends a lifeline when it’s needed most. This is one of those books.” –Katherine Applegate, author of the Newbery Medal-winning, The One and Only Ivan
Revered teacher, librarian, and story ambassador John Schu explores anorexia–and self-expression as an act of survival–in a wrenching and transformative novel-in-verse.
But another voice inside me says,
We need help.
We’re going to die.
Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books–the weird one, the outsider–and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears? A fictionalized account of the author’s experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder, Louder than Hunger is a triumph of raw honesty. With a deeply personal afterword for context, this much-anticipated verse novel is a powerful model for muffling the destructive voices inside, managing and articulating pain, and embracing self-acceptance, support, and love.
10 – 14 years
Hardcover | 528 pages | Grades 5 – 9 | Candlewick Press | 2024
John Schu is the creator of the popular blog Mr. Schu Reads (mrschureads.blogspot.com), was the Ambassador of School Libraries for Scholastic Book Fairs, a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University, and a former classroom teacher and school librarian. He has visited schools all over the world and has met with over 130,000 students, teachers, and administrators as he advocates for the people and things he cares about most: kids, books, schools, and the libraries — and librarians — that connect them. This Is a School is his picture book debut. John Schu lives in Naperville, Illinois.
In stock
