Booklist described Gerber’s novels in starred reviews as both “highly empathetic” and “truly inspiring.” TAKING UP SPACE promises to be a realistic and compelling story about struggling with body image and learning that true self-esteem comes from within.
Watch the preview from Scholastic: TAKING UP SPACE.
I sat down with model Martha Hunt to talk about how we met and connected over our personal experiences with scoliosis. I also share more get the better results about my new book, FOCUSED, which tells the story of a young girl with ADHD and the challenges she faces. Watch my interview with Martha Hunt.
You can now watch the Scholastic Online Preview of FOCUSED, a story of a girl caught between her love of chess and her ADHD for 8- to 12-year-old readers.
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I’m so excited to share the cover of my new middle grade novel FOCUSED with you! Following Braced, which had three starred reviews, comes a story of a girl caught between her love of chess and her ADHD. Read my interview with Scholastic’s Ambassador of School Libraries Mr. Schu!
Clea can’t control her thoughts. She knows she has to do her homework . . . but she gets distracted. She knows she can’t just say whatever thought comes into her head . . . but sometimes she can’t help herself. She knows she needs to focus . . . but how can she do that when the people around her are always chewing gum loudly or making other annoying noises?
It’s starting to be a problem—not just in school, but when Clea’s playing chess or just hanging out with her best friend. Other kids are starting to notice. When Clea fails one too many tests, her parents take her to be tested, and she finds out that she has ADHD, which means her attention is all over the place instead of where it needs to be.
Clea knows life can’t continue the way it’s been going. She’s just not sure how you can fix a problem that’s all in your head. But that’s what she’s going to have to do, to find a way to focus.
In a starred review, Booklist called Alyson Gerber’s first novel, Braced, “a masterfully constructed and highly empathetic debut about a different kind of acceptance.” With Focused, she explores even further how, when life gives you a challenge, the best way to face it is with an open mind, an open heart, and the open support of the people around you.
Shop for FOCUSED at McNally Jackson (signed copy) Indiebound Amazon Barnes & Noble Target Book Depository
Book Riot readers recommend their favorite middle grade books about sports, and BRACED is on the list!
Soccer star Rachel has friends, a crush, and…scoliosis. When her doctor prescribes a back brace, she feels trapped and mortified. Will it break her–or make her stronger?
School Library Journal reviewer, teacher, and librarian loved BRACED!
“I can`t wait to recommend it to more kids! Thanks to so many #bookstagram friends for reviewing this one over the last year — I finally picked it up and then couldn`t put it down!
BRACED is about more than just scoliosis and the trauma of getting a back brace in middle school. This book is also about friendship and family relationships (as well as first romantic relationships) and the way those can be tested. It`s also about soccer! I know quite a few soccer playing kids who will LOVE this book for primarily that reason. The author`s personal experience with scoliosis and a back brace makes this book really powerful.”
Super model, role model and scoliosis warrior Martha Hunt is raising awareness about scoliosis and empowering the young women of Curvy Girls Scoliosis. As a scoliosis warrior and the author of Braced, the first contemporary novel about this disorder, I am so proud to be part of this incredible campaign.
I was eleven when the doctor said I needed to wear a back brace twenty-three hours a day to treat my scoliosis. He wanted to do everything possible to stop the S curve in my spine from getting bigger in order to prevent a spinal fusion, which my mom had undergone when she was my same age. From the moment I saw the brace and learned I’d be stuck inside a thick, plastic shell that hugged my torso from just below my bra to beneath my hips all day every day, my body and my scoliosis were always on my mind.
At first, the brace made everything harder. It hurt to breathe and move and get dressed and be a kid inside my hard exterior. My brace amplified the changes that were happening to my body thanks to puberty. It pushed my chest up and out and gave me fake plastic hips that made me feel like an instant woman when all I wanted to do was blend in and be the same as my friends. It didn’t help that the way I was developing and growing required doctors and monitoring and bracing. I was told over and over that there was something really wrong with my body that needed to be fixed.
During the two years and four months I spent in my brace, I kept my sadness and pain inside, hidden from my closest friends and family. On the outside, I acted confident and totally fine with the fact that my clothes never fit right and that I had to miss out on skiing and cut back to just one ballet class a week. After two years of dancing in The Nutcracker in Boston, I had to skip that too, because the combination of performances and rehearsals required too much time out of the brace.
I was heartbroken to miss out on so many of the things that made me feel good about myself. I pretended that none of it bothered me, while at the same time feeling exposed and insecure, because the last thing I wanted was for other people to see me the way I saw myself—as different. I didn’t think that being honest about how upset I felt was going to change anything for the better, and I didn’t want to keep reminding my friends that I wasn’t like them, when I was already excluded from sharing clothes and skiing and ballet. I thought talking about my brace and focusing on it too much would make it worse.
After my brace came off, I didn’t want to talk or think about scoliosis. I wanted to move on. Only I couldn’t escape the negative view I had of myself. I never stopped hating my brace; it had been such a big part of who I was that I carried it with me even after it was gone, tucked away like a secret. I didn’t want anyone to see what I saw when I looked in the mirror—the S shape in my spine, the way my shoulders and hips always looked and felt uneven, how my torso was too short and seemed wrong and squished between my long arms and legs, and my stomach, which was weak from all of those hours trapped in the brace. I spent a long time after the brace came off struggling to accept my body and feel comfortable in my own skin.
It wasn’t until I was in my twenties, when I started talking and writing about my experience being treated for scoliosis, that I began to realize what a big impact my brace had on my self-image. It made me feel insecure and self-conscious about the way I looked and how I fit in the world, yet I was determined to give off the façade of confidence, even around the people closest to me, because I was trying to convince myself that my brace hadn’t impacted me. More than anything else, I felt alone, because I wasn’t being honest with anyone about the distorted view I had of myself.
Through the process of writing Braced, I had the opportunity to connect with a lot of people who’d experienced scoliosis, including my editor. It helped me to listen to their stories and talk openly about how scoliosis and bracing impacted the way I saw myself. I was shocked to find out that not everyone hated the brace as much as I did. There were so many different ways that people handled scoliosis treatment. Some kids I met named their braces—Mildred and Beatrice and Emily. My editor saw her brace as a protective shell, making her stronger.
Through these conversations, I started to see my own experience differently. I realized there were so many positive parts about wearing a brace—things that had made me better and braver and stronger in the term and long term—that I’d never considered or thought about, because I hadn’t talked about my brace with anyone, much less people who really understood and could relate to what I’d been through. As my perspective changed, I was able to bring what I had learned from other people to Rachel’s experience and help her grow and evolve over the arc of the book I was writing.
These conversations helped me to feel less alone and part of a bigger community, and I began to realize that my scoliosis is a unique part of who I am—curved spine, uneven hips, squished torso and all. It has made me a stronger, more honest and sensitive person.
Scholastic / Arthur A. Levine Books
★ A Junior Library Guild Selection
★ Starred Review from Kirkus
★ Starred Review from Booklist
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I am so thrilled to announce that my next two middle-grade novels will be published by Scholastic!
“Cheryl Klein of Scholastic acquired North American rights to Focused, the second middle-grade novel by Alyson Gerber, in a two-book deal arranged by Kate McKean of Howard Morhaim Literary. In the novel, which centers on a girl named Clea, “the world of competitive chess meets Fish in a Tree”—a middle grade novel by Lynda Mullaly Hunt about a mathematically gifted girl struggling with dyslexia—“as Clea comes to terms with her ADHD diagnosis and discovers the different ways she can succeed,” said McKean. Gerber will publish her debut novel Braced with Scholastic’s Arthur A. Levine Books imprint this spring. Scholastic plans to publish Focused sometime in 2018, with David Levithan editing.” —Publishers Weekly
BIG NEWS!!! BRACED received a SECOND starred review from Booklist! I love this review so much, and I’m excited to finally be able to share it.“Rachel’s life is going really well. She’s 12 and totally crushing it on the soccer field (which means more time with her best-friend teammates), and everyone agrees that the ridiculously cute Tate is within days of asking her to be official BF/GF. All of that comes to a crashing halt when her Boston specialist reveals she has scoliosis. In fact, the curvature of her spine is so extreme that she’ll have to wear a back brace—a heavy hulk of white padded plastic stretching from armpits to tail bone—for 23 hours a day. She tries to keep her spirits up but feels like a freak. Her soccer game plummets, and it seems like everyone—even her friends and Tate—are whispering in the halls. How can everything turn upside down so quickly? And where can she possibly find the strength to power through? Rachel’s first-person narration relays her story in a surprisingly intimate, beautifully earnest voice, likely attributable to Gerber herself suffering from scoliosis and wearing a fitted brace in her formative years. Here she captures the preteen mindset so authentically that it’s simultaneously delightful and painful. Every hallway whisper and direct insult will cut to the reader’s heart, and the details about the process of wearing a brace in all its agonies—and, yes, benefits—are a natural and enlightening thread through the story. A masterfully constructed and highly empathetic debut about a different kind of acceptance.” —Booklist, Starred Review
