The Thing I'm Most Afraid Of
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A new middle-grade tale from critically acclaimed, award-winning author Kristin Levine about facing your fears, set in Vienna during the Bosnian genocide.
Most twelve-year-olds would be excited to fly to Austria to see their dad for the summer but then Becca is not most twelve-year-olds. Suffering from severe anxiety, she fears that the metal detectors at the airport will give her cancer and the long international flight will leave her with blood clots. Luckily, she's packed her Doomsday Journal, the one thing that always seems to help. By writing down her fears and what to do if the worst happens, Becca can get by without (many) panic attacks.
Routines and plans help Becca cope but living in a new country is full of the unexpected--including Becca's companions for the summer. Like Felix, the short and bookish son of Becca's dad's new girlfriend. Or Sara, the nineteen-year-old Bosnian refugee tasked with watching the two of them for the summer. As Becca explores Vienna and becomes close to her new friends, she soon learns she is not alone in her fears. What matters most is what you do when faced with them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1993, 12-year-old Becca's anxiety disorder makes her nervous about many things—developing cancer from an airport X-ray machine or salmonella from undercooked food—but she is determined to visit her father in Vienna for the summer. While he works during the day, Becca embarks on a sightseeing tour with Felix, the quiet son of her dad's girlfriend, and Sara, a Muslim au pair from Bosnia, all implied-white. Though Sara and Felix are patient, Becca's anxiety, and the embarrassment she experiences from it, is a daily struggle. Hearing about Sara's escape from war-torn Sarajevo, though, inspires Becca to create a list of things she wants to accomplish, despite her fears. Becca is an engaging and sympathetic narrator, and Levine (The Jigsaw Jungle) writes her experience of anxiety with nuance and sensitivity. The past is never forgotten in Vienna, and Levine threads the city's history into this novel, in some ways more successfully than others: a historically accurate protest concerning a rise in nationalism interrupts the tale's momentum, while Sara's recollections of the Bosnian War are heartrendingly effective. Ages 10–up.
