Her intense desire to not have to do the same thing day in and out turned into numerous picture books, middle-grade titles and award-winning teen and historical fiction, including National Book Award finalist, Speak, and National Book Award finalist, Chains. She became a freelance writer and journalist, though now that she had two children of her own, she was even more interested in writing her own stories. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss her life and Lia is left behind, haunted by her. Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. Thinking it was time to get a real job, Laurie realized that people would actually pay her to write. The New York Times best-selling story of a friendship frozen between life and death.

Plot Summary Lia is a high school senior with divorced but independently successful parents, a caring stepmom and a little stepsister who adores her. The age range reflects readability and not necessarily content appropriateness. In 1981, she transferred to Georgetown University and graduated three years later with a degree in Languages and Linguistics. Wintergirls is written for kids ages 12 and up. While attending Onondaga Community College, she worked at a dairy farm. She developed a fondness for bacon and working with animals. At times the book is disorienting, but this seems to align with Lia’s state of mind. This book is stark, beautiful, and also painful.

With help from her teachers, Laurie did crack the code and then became one those students who hide library books inside textbooks during class.Īs a teenager, Laurie escaped the traditional classroom and was a foreign exchange student in Denmark, where she worked on pig farm. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson is the touchstone YA novel for eating disorders and self-harming. She attended elementary school in Syracuse, where she was terrified that she’d never be able to learn how to read.

Laurie Halse (rhymes with “waltz”) Anderson got to know and appreciate cold weather growing up in upstate New York.

Wintergirls book