Louder Than Hunger by John Schu (Candlewick, 2024) is a novel-in-verse about a boy overcoming an eating disorder within the walls of a mental health clinic. Sometimes the novel-in-verse format is a forced one for a story. For this book, it is an essential and masterfully done format. Because of the novel-in-verse narration, the reader experiences the emotion of the story. The book also visually portrays the story with white space and typographic font changes. This is a story in which the formatted page makes the reading experience stronger.
Louder Than Hunger focuses on Jake’s increasing confusion in his middle school life as he finally must come to terms with his anorexia. After being checked into the mental health facility, he goes through a variety of stages, from trying to play the system to get out, to having a breakdown, to finally accepting the help offered. He has to come to terms with the middle school bullying he has faced as well as his difficult relationship. Jake’s time in the facility helps him come to terms with his own disordered eating and his own distorted inner voice.
The historical fiction story takes place in the 1990s (my teenagehood, thank you very much) and is set in a mental health facility that the author based on a mental health in patient center in my hometown of Naperville, Illinois, which I have visited before. I happened to like this small connection to my own life because the author mentions places familiar to me, and it takes place during the same years I was living in the community.
The hints at the 1990s setting include the music Jake listens to and his obsession with skating. But these are minor scene setting aspects that don’t really matter that much to the young reader, because the subject matter is so relevant to our world still. Not many books cover young men dealing with disordered eating, so it is powerful for that reason as well. The universality extends. Youth today still struggle of self-acceptance. They still must learn to silence the negative voices in their head. And everyone needs to learn to trust others as they heal.
