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, IBraced/I is the inspiring, heartfelt story of a girl learning to manage the many curves life throws her way.
more
as someone living with scoliosis and all the chronic symptoms it brings, I adored this book! Though my curve was severe and in operating range, I loved breezing though this creative, inspiring, and realistic novel! Rachel is a down-to-earth, raw protagonist, and I enjoyed every page!
A fabulous book with a main character with scoliosis. Perfect for those with it and their parents!
I was excited that my library had “Braced” by Alyson Gerber, which not only features a main character with scoliosis but was written by someone who has actually experienced it. While it’s not a particularly rare childhood condition, and affects people throughout their lives, most of the books I did find were geared toward elementary schoolers, in the vein of books about accepting yourself or others dealing with it.
This book lived up to my hopes and more. It’s not just a story about Rachel, a twelve-year-old soccer player who finds out she has to wear a brace but just wants to be normal. And while I learned a lot about what it’s like to live with scoliosis and to wear a brace, it’s not even just a story about that either. It’s a story about being different and fitting in, about being hurt and healing (in more ways than one), about friendships and reconciliation, apology and honesty. It was a surprisingly rich and complex exploration of how hurt doesn’t go just one way, and how sometimes we can do painful damage without even realizing what it is we’ve said or done. And how being honest and accepting both apologies and responsibility for our own actions is the way to move forward.
I want to see more books like this, and not just because I want to be able to read more characters that help me step into someone else’s shoes in under-appreciated ways. I want more stories that say reconciliation is worth it, that say hurt is not an excuse to hurt back. That let things and people be as complicated as they are in the real world, but also give us reasons to be our best selves and make that world a little better.
I love this book
I loved this book, and it was so beautiful and it was so tear jerking
I think this book is really informational and inspiring and everyone should read this because it is such a great book.
I really enjoyed this book; this story is about a young girl of twelve named Rachel Brooks. She has scoliosis, a condition where the spine curves and becomes crooked. Her condition ends up getting so that she needs to wear a brace until she stops growing so her back will straighten again. But it isn’t easy for her to wear or accept, especially since she loves to play on the soccer team at her school, her friends don’t seem to understand what it’s like for her either, I found them to be downright mean and cruel at one point. But her parents, most especially her mom strongly advises her to wear it, to spare her the option of having surgery like she had when she was a teen.
Having had scoliosis myself, I can completely relate to her story, although I’d found myself identifying more with Rachel’s mother, having unfortunately had to go through the grueling and painful experience of spinal fusion surgery because my spine was too far gone for wearing a brace. But it was interesting to read what Rachel went through, how she has to deal with her brace, and ultimately accepting it as a part of her life.
Wonderful writing and characters, I’d recommend this book to anyone, even those who haven’t had scoliosis.