#nova weetman

Review: Sick Bay by Nova Weetman    #LoveOzYA Rating: 2/5

Since her father died suddenly 18 months ago, Meg Tower has been seeking refuge in her school's sick bay. With her mother missing in action, Meg is struggling to find food for her lunches and appropriate school clothes which has only given her bullies more ammunition. But when Riley Jackson, her bully's second-in-command and recent transfer student, starts making regular appearances in sick bay too, the two girls slowly strike up a friendship that might just make the last few months of primary school bearable.

I have a lot to say about this little novel. I enjoyed it while I was reading - I loved the characters and the Australian setting and I enjoyed reading about that scary transition from primary school to high school. I loved that this was a middle-grade novel tackling big topics like grieving one parent while the other struggles with mental illness and coping with a demanding disability like Type 1 Diabetes. But I really didn't like how Weetman handled those big topics.

Meg is clearly struggling with her situation throughout the novel and, regardless of what Weetman intended, Meg reads as mentally ill. She reads as depressed and anxious and why wouldn't she be? Her mother is barely functioning, she's being horrendously bullied at school, and she's facing the great unknown of starting high school with literally no emotional support.

So for Weetman to then turn around at the 90% mark and decide Meg was faking her panic attacks the entire time? Ableist. Unfair, lazy and ableist.

Until that point, this was a sensitive, beautiful story about a twelve-year-old girl struggling with anxiety and depression - things that affect lots of twelve-year-old girls - only for the author to rip that beautiful representation straight out of the reader's hands. It would've been so much stronger for Meg to actually be struggling with her mental health, and to seek healing alongside her mother. But instead, we have the kind of solution that, rather than uplifting mentally ill readers and encouraging them to seek help, perpetuates the harmful idea that the mentally ill are just faking it.

And then there's Riley. Riley has Type 1 Diabetes. According to the acknowledgements, the author did consult people who live with this disability in her writing of the novel but it's still glaringly obvious that this story about disability was written by an able-bodied author.

The majority of Riley's story revolves around her struggling to take control of caring for her diabetes on her own, in part because of her controlling mother and in part because of her wanting to fit in with her friends as seamlessly as possible. This was fine - it's something all disabled kids struggle with, it's something I struggled with - but the messages about acceptance that Weetman tried to shoehorn into Riley's story weren't disability-friendly at all.

Riley constantly says that her diabetes is only a small part of who she is but this doesn't come off as accepting or being comfortable with her disability. It comes off as trying to deny it, which only leads her to make dangerous choices that land her in hospital. Again, this is something lots of disabled kids struggle with, but there is not enough effort made to counter this harmful idea that rebelling by not taking care of yourself is "normal".

There's not enough pointing out the ableism Riley is encountering from her so-called friends or the fact that Riley's never been able to take charge of her own condition. Acceptance comes with access and Riley hasn't had any of that - she's barely getting dregs by the end of the novel because Weetman pays more attention to how it feels for Riley's mother to let go than to give Riley her autonomy.

But what bothered me most about Riley's story was Weetman's complete disregard for giving Riley any chance to engage with other kids who have diabetes. Riley talks about being sent on an outing with other diabetic kids and finding it so uncomfortable she's never tried it again. Her parents offer to send her to a diabetes camp halfway through the novel and she refuses that too. But Weetman never bothers to emphasise the fact that going on these activities would give Riley - and her controlling mother - the opportunity to connect with other people in her position.

I've been on those outings and those camps. And they can be awkward and uncomfortable depending on who else is there but when the stars align, they can be beautiful, uplifting experiences where you truly do not have to worry about being disabled. The greatest days of my childhood were the days I got to spend with other disabled kids without any ableism or access barriers in sight.

Disabled people need other disabled people. We need our community and this is something able-bodied people never seem to understand which is why it's so frustrating to see it disregarded in a children's book. Growing up with a disability is an endless struggle against ableism from family, friends, teachers, carers, strangers on the street. But connecting with other disabled kids through camps and activity programs are something that breaks up that tsunami of discrimination. It killed me to see Riley denying that opportunity and for Weetman to treat it like normal.

Because it's not normal for disabled people to be isolated from other people with their disability. It's not normal for preteens and teenagers to ignore their medical responsibilities to try to fit in with their friends. It's not normal for parents to control every aspect of their child's disability and refuse to teach them to care for it themselves. It's all ableism and it pains me to see all of this in a novel for kids who probably don't have access to the broader disability community to learn any different.

I was promised this was a story about friendship and self-acceptance but this is just another book by an able-bodied author who bothered to research a medical condition but not the disability community. If you want to write about us, learn what our lives are actually like because we are proud of our disabilities and that's what disabled kids need to see in the books written about them.

#Read Australian in August

Reading Sick Bay to my girl the similarities are aching.  Riley’s mum, a psychologist tends to babble on with, well, psychological babble.  Having an emotionally aware mum sometimes makes it difficult for her daughter to talk independently, perhaps to speak dumbly, without the risk of a conditioning label. Surely feelings can be original in adolescence.  After all isn’t being a teenager by nature…

Book Review: Frankie and Joely by Nova Weetman

Frankie and Joely might just be my pick for the best of #LoveOzYA this year. I loved this beautiful, touching novel that explores adolescent friendship in the most brilliant, evocative way possible. True, proper, all-in female friendship is never flawless, always up and down and all over the place, and Nova Weetman has captured this stunningly. Frankie and Joely are two city girls heading for a week in the country with Joely’s aunt’s family (including her two cousins Thommo and Mack), but their holiday does not pan out how either of them thought it would. The setting is so well described in this novel that I felt myself sweating from the Australian bush heat, despite the never-ending winter I’m actually living through. I also loved the seamlessly change in POVs and the real sense of what it is like to be a teenager. I was completely transported.