Howdy everybody, and happy new year! I have been having an excellent holiday vacation, and have been able to have more free time every day than I’ve been able to in months!
With all of this time to myself, I had a bit of time to do some reading, and one of the books that I read was a graphic novel I had heard about a couple months ago and had been meaning to read.
Peanut, a graphic novel written by Ayun Holiday and illustrated by Paul Hoppe, is a unique story about fitting in inside a new high school environment.
With her parents’ divorce hanging over her head, the main character, Sadie, has to move to a new place and go to a new school, leaving her old life and best friend Cheryl behind.
In a desperate plot to stand out from the others at her new school, and thus fit in, she purchases a Medic Alert bracelet and pretends to have a deadly peanut allergy after learning about peanut allergies from a person who was next to her in a fast food line.
It goes well at first, as she manages to make some new friends, but she soon finds herself overwhelmed by the stresses of keeping up such a complicated ruse.
Without going into much more detail, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I was pretty skeptical when I was given the basic story premise, but as I read the book, I found it to be an enjoyable read.
Many of the characters were very well made, and I could almost relate to Sadie and her elaborate plot. Almost.
While I found the story to be a good one with a great message- to just be yourself- I found it to be a little less than believable at times.
Main character Sadie is hailed as an almost celebrity-like figure among her friend group for much of the story due to her allergy. Not only that, but her friends are constantly on the look out for her, and there is one scene where one of her friends totally freaks out after he reads the label and finds that the chips that Sadie is eating contain peanut oil.
My question is: Where can I get that? This story makes having an allergy seem almost desirable, but in my personal experience, that just isn’t the case.
Sure I get the occasional question about my allergy, and the occasional request to see my EpiPen, but I am definitely not the school celebrity that Sadie is hailed as, and unfortunately some of the kids at my school are closer to threats to my allergy than shining pillars of protection that read my labels for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely enjoyed the read, but Sadie’s allergy experience just seemed like such a polar opposite to mine.
With that being said, I would definitely recommend this book to interested people with allergies or those related to people with allergies. I would avoid giving it to someone as a reference for what life with an allergy is like.
However, since the setting is high school and some of the subject matter might be slightly mature, I would recommend on holding off on giving it to a child unless they are around 7th-8th grade or older.
If you are interested in purchasing the book, here is a link to the Amazon page for the book (This is not a sponsored link. I will not receive any compensation if you click or choose to buy. It is simply for reference.) :
Until next time, and happy new year!
Gary