Deenie

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Took a Level in Kindness: Deenie is quite popular at the start of the book because she's pretty, however she exhibits minor Alpha Bitch tendencies and looks down on the "handicapped kids" quite a bit. After she gets the brace and people start treating her differently, she grows to empathize with them much more, even if her condition is temporary and theirs is not. She also befriends Barbara, a girl in her grade who is ostracized because she has eczema.

Deenie - Judy Blume - Google Books

This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression.

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The book wins because it's not focusing on a certain condition, but an unchangeable event that will make a kid feel even more different than they already do. It touches briefly upon (and it was amusing really) masturbation and questions about this as well. It shows how some people stand out as different due to conditions, but that everyone is still the same and to be treated well.

Deenie | Book by Judy Blume | Official Publisher Page | Simon Deenie | Book by Judy Blume | Official Publisher Page | Simon

Though masturbation and sexual intercourse are mentioned, the novel isn’t really about these topics. What is the central theme of the book? How would you explain this to adults who want to deny adolescents access to the book? Meanwhile, Helen has fallen in love with a boy named Joey, who works for the family’s business, a gas station. Thelma has Joey fired from the gas station because she sees that Helen has become preoccupied with him and is now distracted from her school work. She claims that Joey was let go because of the family’s doctors’ bills due,to Deenie’s scoliosis. This causes Deenie to become afraid that Helen will hate her because of that. Fortunately, Helen doesn’t blame Deenie and this causes them to become closer. Abusive Parents: Thelma is controlling and goes into downright bullying and victim blaming toward her daughters if they dare to try and go outside of what she wants for them (for Deenie to be a model and Helen to focus only on her studies). When Deenie's scoliosis is revealed and Helen is revealed to be attracted to their father's employee, Thelma blames Deenie for her condition and gets Joe fired because she's angry that they're "ruining" what she has planned for them. And in the end, she hasn't changed her mind at all (which is par for the course in most Blume novels). Deenie' sales soar". The Galveston Daily News. 10 September 1985. p.9 . Retrieved 9 May 2017– via newspapers.com. But now that I've reread it, I can say that this review is a solid reminder of WHY it's a good idea to rate/review a book while it is still fresh in one's mind.Yes, I’m going to count the books I read with my daughter in my GR Challenge. They’re books, aren’t they? And you think I’m not learning anything, I’m not experiencing anything profound from a YA master about the lives of preteens? Huh. If anything, I’m being taken out of that comfort zone, learning a new culture. Even better, I get to share it with my daughter, reading it out loud while she squeezes play-slime in her hands. That’s a reading experience for you. In this book, Deenie has Scoliosis which is a problem with the spine. She is told she must wear a brace and is ashamed and scared of what her friends will think of her.

Deenie – Judy Blume on the Web

Daddy's Girl: Deenie's far closer to her father than with her mother, mostly because he doesn't police her diet and posture and gives her breathing room to be a kid. The only time he puts his foot down with her is when he insists that she wears the Milwaukee brace to Janet's party. Although Deenie is initially upset, she later comes to admit that he's right. The drive along the coastal highway to Key West, Fla., has become a literary pilgrimage of sorts. Many before me have made the trek to the southernmost spot in the continental U.S. – to a city closer to Cuba than Miami – to pay homage to Ernest Hemingway, who lived here in the 1930s. Stage Mom: Deenie is blessed with not one, but two examples of this trope — her actual mother and "Aunt" Rae, who isn't Deenie's blood relative, but rather a close friend of her mother's — whose attitudes toward Deenie's scoliosis and its implications for her modeling career make her situation that much harder to take (both of them implying that Deenie herself is to blame for developing scoliosis). Deenie is relieved towards the end of the book when she realizes she probably won't become a model because of the brace and adds she never really wanted to be one anyway; it was all her mother's idea. When Deenie finds out that she has scoliosis, she’s scared. When she sees the brace for the first time, she wants to scream.Good Parents: Frank Fenner is much more understanding and reasonable in regards to his daughters than Thelma is. While Thelma is emotionally manipulative and reacts to situations as if she were the victim or tries to even blame Deenie and Helen, Frank is very calm and doesn't hesitate to comfort his daughters when they need him and yet also firm in that Deenie needs to wear her brace which she eventually realizes is right of him to do.

Deenie (Literature) - TV Tropes Deenie (Literature) - TV Tropes

Showing the development from an uncaring child to one that understands pain is a useful tactic, but Deenie takes this so far as to be unbelievable. Her biting commentary and treatment of all those she sees as less than perfect left me squirming. Taken alone, Deenie’s comment that Old Lady Murray is “so ugly she makes me want to vomit” because of her curved spine could at least be dismissed as childish ignorance. It at least foreshadows her own condition.

The writing is as good as always, but, as far as Judy Blume books go, the connection to the characters seemed off, and the topic felt somewhat contrived.