Here I Am
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An honest, uplifting story about learning to live in the body you're born with.
When seventeen-year-old Marcella Boucher asks Lou Duncan to her high school's "reverse prom" she expects a few snickers. After all, no one else knows that outside school the star football player has a thing for the girl everyone calls Moocella. However, she could never have anticipated the splashy aftermath of her very public display of affection. Or how it would send her to the edge of despair. But life has a way of putting exactly what, and who, you need in front of you at the right time...you just need to be brave enough to accept them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seventeen-year-old Marcella "Celly" Boucher is tall, blonde, and fat, and just wants to survive senior year at Twain High School in Sun Valley, Nev., so she can start anew at college. All she has to do is endure the anti-fat bullying that's followed her since grade school, navigate her gym-owning parents' efforts to make her thinner, not ruin her secret friends-with-benefits relationship with star baseball player Lou Duncan, and avoid befriending cute newcomer Jason Daley. After an incident at school causes Celly to attempt suicide, she starts therapy and Jason introduces her to his foster mother's gym, which is unlike any gym Celly has ever heard of. There, women of all body types embrace themselves through weightlifting. Celly soon begins training to join the gym's deadlifting team and gradually learns how to see her body—and herself—in a new light. Via Celly's acerbic wit and vulnerability, Grimes (Center of Gravity) presents a sincere portrait of one fat teenager's experience, ruminates on society's double standards surrounding body image, and portrays Celly and Jason's blossoming romance with heart-aching sweetness. Main characters cue as white. Ages 13–up.
