The Heart Is Not a Size - Hardcover

Kephart, Beth

3.5

218 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061470481 ISBN 13: 9780061470486

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2010

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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.

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About the Author:

Beth Kephart was nominated for a National Book Award for her memoir A Slant of Sun. Her first novel for teens, Undercover, received four starred reviews and was named a Best Book by Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and Amazon.com. In 2005 Beth was awarded the Speakeasy Poetry Prize. She has also written Into the Tangle of Friendship: A Memoir of the Things That Matter; Still Love in Strange Places: A Memoir; Ghosts in the Garden: Reflections on Endings, Beginnings, and the Unearthing of Self; Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River; Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business; and House of Dance. She lives in Pennsylvania with her family.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 8 Up—In this novel best suited for contemplative teen readers, narrator Georgia, who is sturdy and studious, and Riley, wispy and artistic, have been friends since kindergarten in their Main Line Pennsylvania town. Winter break of junior year, Georgia learns of a summer service trip to Juarez, Mexico, talks her parents into letting her go, and pulls Riley into her plan. The latter two-thirds of the tale take place on the Good Works trip itself, as the characters slip past a boundary between the before and the after, highlighting the transformative power of such a mission. Riley has been whittling herself smaller and smaller to break the "average" mold her pampered and Botoxed mother has cast around her; and when Georgia notices that she is eating nothing while doing hard physical labor under a blazing sun, she breaks the code of silence and their friendship when she uses the A-word: anorexia. Riley turns away from Georgia, and Georgia turns to snapping photos of the people and landscape of their project: to construct a community bathroom for Anapra, a tin-roofed shanty town for border factory-assembly workers and their families. Georgia also watches and coaxes out of silence Drake, a boy as introspective as she, while she waits to see if Riley will come back to their friendship and acknowledge her eating disorder. Lyrically and philosophically written, the story is more message than compelling story-driven fiction. It's not likely to hook or hold most readers.—Suzanne Gordon, Peachtree Ridge High School, Suwanee, GA
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