The Heart Is Not a Size
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Georgia knows what it means to keep secrets. She knows how to ignore things. She knows that some things are better left unsaid. . . . Or are they?
When Georgia and her best friend, Riley, travel along with nine other suburban Pennsylvania kids to Anapra, a squatters' village in the heat-flattened border city of Juarez, Mexico, secrets seem to percolate and threaten both a friendship and a life. Certainties unravel. Reality changes. And Georgia is left to figure out who she is outside the world she's always known.
Beth Kephart paints a world filled with emotion, longing, and the hot Mexican sun.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seventeen-year-old best friends Georgia and Riley plan to make a difference in the world their junior year by joining the GoodWorks team, a group of teenagers heading to Mexico to do community service. In Anapra, a small village outside Ju rez, the girls find the heat nearly unbearable and the work building a public bathroom for villagers grueling. Observant, reliable Georgia is able to find beauty in the landscape and in the people she meets; however, she worries that Riley, who refuses to eat and is already thin as a sunbeam, suffers from anorexia, which drives a wedge between the girls. Themes of friendship, service, and transformation are skillfully woven into Kephart's (Nothing but Ghosts) novel, but the overall message feels ambiguous. More focused and memorable are Georgia's descriptions of characters ( I was looking at Drake and seeing moons in his eyes, and seeing the ruin in the moons in those eyes... ) and observations ( Do the right thing, you risk ruin. Choose responsibility, and don't think that makes you someone's hero ), which make for lovely, poetic reading. Ages 12 up.
