Slant
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Lauren, a Korean American adoptee, is best friends with the prettiest girl in school. Julie has an endless amount of confidence. Lauren doesn’t. It’s not that she wants to look like everyone else in her suburban Connecticut school—she’d just be happy if Sean, the cutest boy in her class, noticed her. And she could do without the names, too. Like “Slant.”
When Sean slips one day and calls her by the taunt, she knows she has to take matters into her own hands. Using her life savings, Lauren decides to undergo a special eye surgery that will deepen the crease of her eyelid so she just blends in. After she convinces her father to agree, Lauren learns a secret about her dead mother and finds herself faced with a dilemma: should she get the operation that might make her more confident and well-liked, or can she find that confidence within?
Sensitive and beautifully written, Laura E. Williams’s novel offers a powerful lesson to young readers whose self-esteem depends too much on how they look.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mirroring themes found in An Na's recent Fold but geared for a younger audience, this timely novel also revolves around a Korean-American heroine who considers plastic surgery in an effort to look more American. Tired of being called "Slant," 13-year-old Lauren the adopted daughter of white parents dreams of having surgery that will make her eyes appear rounder. But after scheduling the operation, Lauren has second thoughts. Using first-person narrative, Williams (Behind the Bedroom Wall) pointedly conveys how Lauren's observations are linked to her changing attitude. First Lauren begins to notice that all her classmates even the popular kids have flaws ("Even cheerleader Sandy has thick ankles," Lauren notes after Sandy points out that one of Lauren's tormentors has a "big Jew nose"). Later, she comes to realize that outer beauty does not ensure happiness, an idea melodramatically illustrated in a scene in which Lauren discovers that her mother, dead for three years, died of suicide and not in an accident. Although the moral is transparent and the outcome predictable, readers will relate to the vulnerable heroine and her struggle. Ages 8 13.
