Needles

Dominick, Andie. Needles: A Memoir of Growing Up With Diabetes. New York: Scribner, 1998.

Annotation: An Iowan girl learns the hard way that getting what you think you want can be a very difficult lesson when she is diagnosed at the age of nine with diabetes, just like her much-admired older sister.


Justification for rejection: This memoir spans a large portion of Andie Dominick's life, beginning with her early memories of playing with her big sister's insulin needles and ending with her wedding. Overall, the book lacked oomph in enough areas to not be a good candidate for the Printz award. First, Dominick's writing style lacks character - repeatedly, I felt I was reading an assignment for a creative writing class focusing on descriptive writing. Second, there's an overall cohesiveness missing (and admittedly it's one of the challenges of memoir-writing). The titular needles, daily necessities for Andie and her sister and dishing out lots of pain alongside their medicine, serve to focus the beginning of Andie's story. By the second half of the book, however, Andie moves on to the other challenges presented by her life with diabetes and the theme disappears, well before it was adequately presented. Third, young adult genre expectations are simply not met by this book: Andie's teen years don't play a central role in her memoir, nor are enough developmental issues addressed. Unavoidably, she comes to terms with her physical limitations; gets an abortion after an unplanned pregnancy happens in high school; and as an adult she suffers through her sister's early death. Her resulting vision is not particularly clear or remarkable, however, and I would only recommend this book to teens seeking out diabetes-related information.

Genre: Memoir.