Peanut

by Ayun Halliday and Paul Hoppe

Genre: Graphic novel/Realistic fiction
Age group: 10-11+

Sadie Wildhack is moving to Plainfield. She's going to be starting at Plainfield Community High School as a sophomore. Nobody in Plainfield knows her yet, though. And Sadie thinks this is the perfect opportunity to start over.
She decides to rework herself and invents a severe peanut allergy - she tells everyone that if she ate just a little bit of peanut, or breathed it in, she would die. And the thing is - everyone believes her! Then the nurse finds out, and Sadie is overloaded with an all-new complication - an Epipen.
Soon what started out as a ploy to attract attention becomes a full-scale fabrication. Sadie is living a lie, and it's no small task. Just one little slip-up could destroy her carefully constructed new life... and such a slip-up is dangerously easy to happen.

I think this book as a graphic novel is especially appealing. The pictures are really great. The whole thing is done in gray-and-white, but Sadie is always wearing a bright red shirt so she stands out.
Why did I like this book? Well, I thought the story idea was really... fresh and new. There are plenty of reworking-yourself books out there, but the idea of creating a fake allergy was so different. The way the plot works in this book is also really good - it's sort of like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Not that the book is bad! I don't mean it that way! But you sort of know in the back of your mind that something is going to go wrong, somewhere, and you can't do anything to stop it from happening. I just really liked this book because it builds up so well and the suspense going up to the climax is really good. Overall, I would recommend this book to everyone.