Braced

Cover for Braced
Rachel's scoliosis is worsening, and she's made to wear a back brace 23 hours a day — affecting her family, her best friends, her crush, and her spot on the soccer team.

Braced

The first contemporary novel about a disease that bends the lives of ten percent of all teenagers: scoliosis.

Rachel Brooks is excited for the new school year. She’s finally earned a place as a forward on her soccer team. Her best friends make everything fun. And she really likes Tate, and she’s pretty sure he likes her back. After one last appointment with her scoliosis doctor, this will be her best year yet.

Then the doctor delivers some terrible news: The sideways curve in Rachel’s spine has gotten worse, and she needs to wear a back brace twenty-three hours a day. The brace wraps her in hard plastic from shoulder blades to hips. It changes how her clothes fit, how she kicks a ball, and how everyone sees her — even her friends and Tate. But as Rachel confronts all the challenges the brace presents, the biggest change of all may lie in how she sees herself.

Written by a debut author who wore a brace of her own, Braced is the inspiring, heartfelt story of a girl learning to manage the many curves life throws her way.

    • detailed descriptions of putting on the brace, including feeling restrained and having difficulty breathing
    • being studied and gawked at in a medical setting
    • mentions of a friend’s mentally ill mother having passed away due to an accidental overdose
    • repeated verbal bullying

Practical information

Author: Alyson Gerber
Publisher: Scholastic (Arthur A. Levine)
Publication year: 2017
ISBN: 9780545902144
Age category: middle grade
Disability portrayed: scoliosis
Genre: contemporary

Accessible formats


audiobook available

Author

Alyson Gerber

Alyson Gerber is the author of the critically-acclaimed, own-voices novels Braced and Focused. Her third novel Taking Up Space will be in stores on May 18, 2021. She has an MFA from The New School in Writing for Children and lives in New York City with her family. Braced received three starred reviews, was a Junior Library Guild Selection, and has been nominated for state book awards in Oklahoma, Indiana, New Hampshire, Virginia, South Dakota, and Georgia. Alyson’s second novel, Focused, about a girl caught between her love of chess and her ADHD, was picked as a best book of year by The Today Show, Kirkus Reviews, and A Mighty Girl and has been nominated for state book awards in Rhode Island, Oklahoma, and Michigan. Her latest novel, Taking Up Space, based on her experience with disordered eating, will help readers recognize how much they matter and see that if something negative is taking up space in their minds, even if there isn’t a name for it, they should ask for help. Alyson is a graduate of The New School’s MFA in Writing for Children and lives with her family in New York City.

When I was 11, I didn’t know anyone else who had to wear a back brace twenty-three hours a day, and my mom was actually the only other person I knew who’d been treated for scoliosis. Reading Braced would have given me a chance to hear from someone my own age who was going through a similar experience and managing this really big responsibility. I think ultimately Rachel’s story would have made me feel understood, less alone, and like I wasn’t the only one who felt different.
(Scholastic: On Our Minds, April 2017)