Middle Grade Review: Louder than Hunger, by John Schu

 I'm not ordinarily a huge fan of books in verse. This one will have to be an exception.

 

 

Title: Louder Than Hunger

Author: John Schu

Publication info: Candlewick Press 2024. 528 pages

Source: Library

Publisher's Blurb:
(Goodreads)  Revered teacher, librarian, and story ambassador John Schu explores anorexia—and self-expression as an act of survival—in a wrenching and transformative novel-in-verse.

But another voice inside me says,
We need help.
We’re going to die.

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books—the weird one, the outsider—and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears? A fictionalized account of the author’s experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder, Louder than Hunger is a triumph of raw honesty. With a deeply personal afterword for context, this much-anticipated verse novel is a powerful model for muffling the destructive voices inside, managing and articulating pain, and embracing self-acceptance, support, and love.

 
My Review:
I picked this book up because Greg Pattridge's review for the Marvelous Middle Grade Monday blog hop made me think it would be worth the reading. He didn't mislead me. 

A note on the page count: it looks daunting, but the verse format means it's actually a very fast read. I did have a problem on my ereader with a couple of pages that are "pictures" of notes Jake receives--they don't expand with font size and were too small to read without a magnifying lens. Fortunately, I keep one of those handy.

This story takes place in the 1990s because that's when the author's experience of much the same thing took place, and a note at the end suggests that treatment has changed since then. But Jake's experience of self-loathing as a result of brutal verbal bullying is, sadly, not outdated. I felt like I learned a lot about eating disorders, and the depiction of the illness as a voice inside him that drowns out everything else helped it make sense to me. Jake also makes it clear that anorexia isn't really about body image. It's about self-worth. For some, maybe it starts with a need to be skinnier to look right, but Jake is pretty clear that it's about 1) having something he can control, and 2) trying in effect to disappear, so that he will no longer be a target.

I was almost immediately drawn into a powerful empathy with Jake, feeling his pain as life gives him a few gratuitous kicks when he's down. That meant I could also share the dawning hope as he begins to take control of his eating disorder and reclaim his life. It may help that by the time he returns to school it will be high school--where my experience says that nasty kind of bullying begins to fade out as kids gain enough maturity to accept difference without feeling threatened.

I am sometimes disappointed by "issue" books--ones introducing kids to the disease of the day. I had a fear that this might be one of those--it is, after all, about anorexia and intended to improve understanding of the illness. But I was pleased to find that, in addition to offering raw insight into the heart and mind of Jake and his battle with illness, it was also a really good story.

My Recommendation:
I don't think this is for younger MG readers. I'd probably put it at 11 and up, just because the topic feels too alien to younger kids. I hope it is; I could be wrong. It certainly makes me want to read more from John Schu.

FTC Disclosure: I checked Louder Than Hunger out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2024
 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated. 


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