Second star to the right /
by Deborah Hautzig.
- New York : Puffin Books, 1999.
- 158 p. ; 19 cm.
Leslie Hiller's world is growing smaller. It used to be large enough to include her worrisome but loving mother, her doting father, her close friend Cavette, and all the other people and places that made up her upper-class, A+ life. But now it has shrunk to the size of a dinner plate full of food--which she scrapes out her bedroom window to avoid eating. Leslie, a perfectionist who loves to be in control, finds she can't control the fear that she will somehow fail to be the perfect daughter, perfect student, and perfect friend. So she decides to master the one thing over which she is certain she has complete domain: food. Even when it becomes apparent to everyone that her severe dieting has become a life-threatening habit, Leslie still can't stop: "I want to be happy. And being happy means being thin." As fourteen-year-old Leslie begins to shed the weight she feels makes her imperfect, she finds it increasingly difficult to reach out for the psychological help she knows she needs.