Hunger

Gr 8 Up—Suicidal, anorexic Lisabeth thinks she is hallucinating when Death (who looks a lot like a certain dead grunge rock star) rings her doorbell, hands her a set of scales, and informs her that she is now one of the four riders of the Apocalypse—Famine, specifically. When ignoring the scales and the giant war horse grazing in the front yard doesn't work, Lisabeth takes up the mantle of Famine and rides out to areas marked by the excess of gluttony and decimated by starvation. It's not long before she learns how to spread hunger and discord, and maybe even how to balance the scales in the areas of the worst suffering. She meets fellow riders—War, who encourages her destructive tendencies, and Pestilence, who councils her to find balance because, "Well, if everyone dies, I'd be out a job, wouldn't I?" At the heart of this slim novel is a teen struggling with serious food issues, and the storytelling is both realistic and compassionate. If the metaphor of an anorexic as Famine is obvious, the writing is never preachy, and it allows an interesting exploration of both intensely personal food issues and global ones. This book has an excellent hook and is short enough to recommend to reluctant readers.—Caroline Tesauro, Radford Public Library, VA