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Laurie Halse Anderson’s Winter Girls
BOOK
By: Ryan Novak
Laurie Halse Anderson’s Winter Girls
ABC BOOK
By: Ryan Novak
Illustrated by Franklin Delano Romanowski
Published by Pennington Press
Copyright Ryan Novak, 2011
To any Lias out there…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ryan Novak is an English and journalism teacher at Kenston High School in
Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Prior to teaching at Kenston High School, Novak taught for
two years at Brecksville-Broadview Hts. High School. A graduate of Ohio
University, Novak is currently working towards a Master’s degree in Curriculum
and Instruction: Literacy Development – Reading at Cleveland State University.
Novak enjoys reading, running, following Cleveland sports, eating chicken
wings, and taking advantage of the streaming feature on Netflix.
A
is for anesthetic
“Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don’t want to feel
any of this. Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an
anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns
into poison and by then it’s too late because you are mainlining it
now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and can’t stop” (161).
B
is for bulimia
“im bulimic have been for six years recently tried to recover gained a
lot of weight now im slipping back and cant stand the weight any
longer” (128).
C
is for contagious
“When I get close, they step back. The cameras in their eyeholes
record the zit on my chin, the rain in my eyes, the blue water under
my skin. They pick up every sound on their collar microphones. They
Want to pull me inside of them, but they’re afraid.
I am contagious” (161).
D
is for Dr. Marrigan
“Mom Dr. Marrigan told me that I was too smart to be a slacker
faculty kid. She wanted to have me privately tested, to prove that I
was brilliant and that the school was not meeting my needs” (17).
E
is for eating
“She measures the three bites of turkey left on my plate and the
bread crumbs that I scattered next to it. ‘Lia looks pale. Has she been
eating?’” (69).
F
is for fragile
“Lia: I’ll go.
Mom: Absolutely not. You’re emotionally fragile” (72).
G
is for glittering girls
“Thatcher drew a picture of Cassie with watermelon-sized breasts and
passed it around the class. The glittering girls giggled and twirled
their gum around their fingers” (40).
H
is for hungry
“I had to eat at Thanksgiving (vultures all around the table), but since
then it’s been mostly water and rice cakes. I am so hungry that I could
gnaw off my right hand” (27).
I
is for infidelity
“Jennifer is not the reason my parents got divorced. The reason was
named Amber, and before her Whitney, and before her Jill and the
others” (67).
J
is for Jennifer
“My stepmother Jennifer could lock the door, twist the dial to SCALD,
and press ON” (67).
K
is for knife
L
is for lies
“’Where you at the library again?’
‘A friend’s house. Mira’s,’ I lie. ‘We studied a little physics, but
mostly we played cards and ate pizza’” (124).
M
is for mother
“The breakup with my mother was the same old story told a million
times. Girl is born, girl learns to talk and walk, girl mispronounces
words and falls down. Over and over again. Girl forgets to eat, fails
adolescence, mother washes hands of Girl, scrubbing with surgical
soap and a brush for three full minutes…” (68).
N
is for Nanna Marrigan
“The day we buried Nanna Marrigan, I walked behind my mother
through the cemetery…The grave diggers lifted my grandmother’s
coffin as if it were filled with feathers. As they lowered it into the
ground, the wind blew and ghostshadows unfolded and folded
themselves like butterflies on the ground. The marble girls whispered
and the ghostshadows snick inside me and hid behind my ribs…”
(136).
O
is for one large rice cake
“One large rice cake = 35. Top it with one teaspoon of spicy mustard
and you add 5. Two teaspoons = 10. Rice cakes with hot sauce are
better. You eat and are punished in the same bite. Jennifer doesn’t
buy hot sauce anymore. Two rice cakes, four teaspoons of mustard =
90” (31).
P
is for perfect
“Jennifer is determined to carve her into the perfect-little-girl who
will turn into the perfect-young-lady whose shining accomplishments
will prove to the world that Jennifer is the absolutely perfect mother”
(25).
Q
is for queasy
“Um, I’m feeling kind of queasy. I don’t think driving is a good idea.”
R
is for real
“When I was a real girl, they would cuddle with me on the couch and
tell me the fairy-tale version of how they fell in love…The real story is
not poetic. Mom got pregnant. Dad married her. They couldn’t stand
each other by the time I was born” (74).
S
is for sick/strong
“Who wants to recover? It took me years to get this tiny. I wasn’t
sick; I was strong” (74).
T
is for trust
“‘Trust, Lia.’
She said it.
‘That’s the issue. Especially now. We don’t want…’
‘If I weren’t so tired, I’d shove trust and issues down the garbage
disposal and let it run all day’” (6).
U
is for useless
“::Some Girl!/Useless!/Delirious!::” (116).
V
is for vs.
“The real girl I was slips out and listens to the echo-voices shouting
ugly at each other in every room of this house. Mom vs. Dad. Dad vs.
Mom. Dad vs. Mom’s job. Mom vs. Dad’s girlfriends. MomDad vs.
Lia’s report cards, Lia’s recitals, Lia’s decision to quit again. Lia vs.
everythingbody” (153).
W
is for wintergirl
“She wipes a snowflake off my cheek. ‘You’re not dead, but you’re
not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl, Lia-Lia, caught in between the
worlds. You’re a ghost with a beating heart. Soon you’ll cross the
border and be with me. I’m so stoked. I miss you wicked.” (195-196).
X
is for eXperiment
“They experimented on me for weeks. 089.00. 090.60. 093.00.
095.00. They stuffed the Lita-piñata with melted cheese and bread
crumbs. 099.00. 103.00. 104.00. 105.00. 106.00. They released me
at 108.00 with a three-ring slut-red binder that held all of my lessons:
meal plans, follow up appointments, magic incantations affirmations
to keep away the nasty thoughts” (139).
Y
is for you
“‘You are not thinking clearly. You’re dizzy. And you lied to me about
breakfast’…‘You look terrible. How much do you weigh?’” (155).
Z
is for zero
“I could say that I’m excited, but that would be a lie. The number
doesn’t matter. If I got down to 070.00, I’d want 065.00. If I weighed
010.00, I wouldn’t be happy until I got down to 005.00. The only
number that would ever be enough is 0. Zero pounds, zero life, size
zero, double-zero, zero point. Zero in tennis is love. I finally get it’”
(220).