Book Descriptions
for Unbecoming by Jenny Downham
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Teenage Katie’s mom, Caroline, resents having to care for her estranged mother, Mary, who has dementia. But for Katie, shunned socially since kissing her former best friend, spending time with the grandmother she is getting to know is a welcome distraction. Katie is trying to wade through her grandmother’s vanishing memory, and butting up against her mother’s unwillingness to talk about the past. But flashbacks illuminate the two women’s divide and the parallels between their lives: Mary and Caroline both feel guilty about a number of things, including choices they made as parents. Katie finds herself drawn to Mary, who is kind, and whose comfortable sexuality as a young woman is the opposite of what Katie feels as she contemplates her attraction to Simona, a classmate rumored to be lesbian. Katie realizes how much between her mother and grandmother has gone unsaid or been misunderstood, and that important things in her own childhood have been kept hidden. This becomes part of the inspiration to speak her own truth as she finds the courage to come out. A quiet yet riveting novel captures the complexities and absolute messiness of feelings among characters who are neither right nor wrong, just vivid and real as they move toward greater openness and acknowledgement of the love they feel. (Age 14 and older)
CCBC Choices 2017. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2017. Used with permission.
From The United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY)
Three generations of women now live under one roof. Katie's family dynamic takes a dramatic turn when estranged Grandma Mary moves in. But Katie's world had already been falling apart. She kissed her best friend, who now calls her a freak. To cope with fresh wounds, Katie decides to record her grandmother's past in a journal before Mary's memories disappear entirely. Now, unbecoming family secrets are pouring out into the world. The revelation and exposure of old scars might just be what it takes for Katie to tell her family the truth.
2017 Stonewall Honor Award Finalist -- Children/Young Adult, 2016 YA Book Prize Finalist, 2016 Redbridge Book Award, 2016 People's Book Prize Finalist, 2016 BASH Award, 2017 CILIP Carnegie Medal, 2017 Lancashire Book of the Year Finalist, 2017 Mississippi Magnolia Children's Choice Book Award Finalist.
Jenny Downham is a British novelist and an ex-actress who has published award winning books.
England. Originally published in English by David Fickling Books in 2015. Published in the United States by Scholastic Inc. in 2016.
© USBBY, 2022. Used with permission.