By Rebecca Morrison
An Iranian American girl, aching to fit into the dress her mother made and the body her mother wants, slides into disordered eating before finding her way back.
Yasmin moved from Iran to America a year and a half ago, and she's trying to fit in everywhere at once: at school, with her mother, and into the beautiful blue dress her mom sewed for Nowruz, the Persian New Year. When she can't, she sets herself a new goal, to lose enough weight to wear it to the seventh-grade dance. Her mother's wish that she be thinner and her own harsh self-judgment push her toward some dangerous choices around food, until she finds help, a truer kind of friendship with Carmen, and slowly a way to live in her own body.
This is the book for the older child already wrestling with how they look and what they eat, and it doesn't flinch. Morrison writes Yasmin's disordered eating from the inside, so a child recognizes the thinking instead of being lectured about it, and the story never leaves her stuck there: it walks her toward help and self-acceptance. The immigrant thread and the complicated, loving, painful bond with her mother give it real texture. Best read by a child mature enough for the subject, ideally with you nearby to talk.