By Marissa Eller
Published by Holiday House
Mom's Review
This is the book that needs to have existed decades ago for kids with JRA, now called juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Here is a book that integrates the reality of JRA with a story worth reading. Could Ivy have been written without JRA? I don't think so. Her diagnosis impacts her life, how she interacts with friends, and what she chooses to spend her time on. But does her JRA define her? No. Ivy is a complex character who experiences all the drama of teenage life while figuring out who she is and what she wants for herself. There is depth to both the character and the story - Joined at the Joints is a rich read. If you want a realistic novel about high school life, look no further.
While I don't completely identify with Ivy - my JRA subsided when I hit puberty - I feel like this is the book I needed as an adolescent. Even reading it now, I feel a little bit better for my preteen self who sometimes felt like a weird outsider when JRA got in the way of doing whatever the rest of my classmates were doing. Yes, even as an adult, when Ivy talked about different medicine or treatments, I was tickled to think, "Hey, I know exactly what she's talking about!" I texted my husband shots of the pages with lines circled to say, "This is me!" Joined at the Joints offered me some retroactive community and emotional healing.
A note on teen sexual activity in the novel: Eller does an excellent job of broaching the topic of Ivy's potential sexual activity. Why Ivy begins a new medication, the doctor immediately prescribes her birth control pills without consulting Ivy; the new medication is not compatible with pregnancy and his goal is evidently to prevent a pregnancy from occurring. Ivy is not ready to confront the subject of sex and pregnancy at the time and is supremely uncomfortable with how the doctor treated her - how he dismissed her. Eller offers a nuanced look at the patient-doctor relationship through the eyes of a girl whose doctor makes assumptions. Ivy broaches the subject of changing medications and starting birth control pills with both a close friend and with her family, and she is able to have the conversations she should have had with her doctor. The gravity of commencing a sexual relationship as a young teen is treated with the seriousness it needs. In contrast, the older sister's sex life was treated a bit cavalierly for the audience's age and could have been omitted.
Comments
Post a Comment