Less Than Perfect

By Louise Albert

Fifteen-year-old Laura finds her life terribly complicated when she meets an interesting boy and her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0823416887
• ISBN13: 9780823416882
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Holiday House
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.8"
• Age Range: 10 to 14 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 9

Customer Reviews

Love and Loss

Laurie's fifteen conscious of her own changing body and her own relationships. Feeling less than perfect herself, with a brother who is a musical genius and with the usual teenage feelings of inadequacy, she is suddenly jolted out of her self-involvement when her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. At the same time, Laurie meets a boy she likes whose family seems to offer her the admiration and affection that she thinks is non-existent in her own home. Unable to give her mom the support she knows she should, Laurie muddles through a year of a variety of losses -- finally being able to give love as well as to receive it. Albert here has skillfully woven a novel that explores young love even as it explores and answers questions that a mastectomy brings not only to the victim but to those who are closest to her -- specifically to a daughter scared of her own feelings and the changes and needs of her own adolescent body.