Stronger at the Seams
A Young Adult Coming of Age Novel About Disabilities, Chronic Illness, and Learning to Advocate for Yourself
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- USD 10.99
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- USD 10.99
Descripción editorial
2025 Crystal Kite Honor Winner for Midsouth Region
Twyla is far from fine. With her varsity field hockey career on the line, her friendships in shambles, and a medical diagnosis that is far from the truth, Twyla simply wants to be heard. Stronger at the Seams is a powerful coming-of-age story about disabilities, chronic illness, and learning to advocate for yourself.
Twyla enters high school sure of three things: Her best friends will always be there for her, the next four years will be amazing, and her mom was right when she said there’s a reason behind everything. Then, during a field hockey game, she gets extremely nauseous and struggles with concentration. What should have been a great year starts spiraling. Despite a diagnosis of mild digestive issue, Twyla doesn’t feel right. She’s exhausted, sick more often than not, and struggling to keep up at school — but every doctor says she’s “fine.” As her world starts to unravel, Twyla realizes that the hardest part isn’t being sick… it’s being ignored.
Between mounting medical appointments, shifting friendships, her varsity hockey career in shambles, and family tensions she doesn’t fully understand, Twyla must learn how to speak up — even when it feels uncomfortable, scary, or impossible. As questions about her health collide with long-buried family secrets, Twyla begins to discover that finding her voice may be the key to holding herself together.
Stronger at the Seams is a powerful young adult coming-of-age novel about:
Advocating for yourself when no one else willLiving with chronic illness and invisible strugglesNavigating friendships, school, and family pressureLearning that strength doesn’t always look the way we expect
Perfect for readers who love emotionally rich stories like Wonder and The Fault in Our Stars, this Crystal Kite Honor–winning novel offers a compassionate, hopeful look at resilience, self-discovery, and what it means to be truly heard.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fourteen-year-old Twyla Vogel thinks that helping her Louisville, Ky., high school's field hockey team win games should be her only concern. Instead, she's preoccupied with how sick she feels; dealing with frequent nausea and declining appetite during games, sleepovers, or school dances has taken its toll. Worse, her two best friends are spending more time together without her, a teammate seems determined to undermine her at every opportunity, and she's developed confusing feelings for her childhood friend Elliot. Following a discouraging doctor's visit during which she's diagnosed with constipation, Twyla searches for answers herself. Spurred by her recent studies in AP biology, Twyla wonders if her illness could be linked to her late mother's genetics. Twyla's accessible narration depicts her tumultuous situations: her physical struggles, her distant relationship with her father, grief over her mother's death five years earlier, her changing friendships. Based on the author's family experiences, as discussed in an endnote by Stocker (Listen: How Evelyn Glennie, a Deaf Girl, Changed Percussion), it's a compassionate interpretation of one teen's difficulties navigating health concerns and medical advocacy. Most characters cue as white. Ages 13–up.
