7th Grade Book Reviews

Hannah’s Review of Freak by Marcella Pixley

Miriam Fisher is an outsider. For her, seventh grade is a year imprinted in her mind “clear as pain”. It’s the year that her former best friend and sister, Deborah, joined the high school in-crowd. It’s the year that the high school senior Artie Rosenberg, Miriam’s soul mate, comes to live with Miriam’s family. And it’s the year that the popular “Watermelon Girls” intensify their harsh harassment of Miriam and hurt her in a way that nobody else at school could. Miriam has no one to turn to at home or school, and eventually explodes, taking matters into her own hands and making some dramatic changes. Miriam reveals an inner strength that she and her peers never knew she had. Freak does not only speak for Miriam, but for all the outsiders in the same situation as Miriam. Despite the fact that Miriam thinks of herself as an outsider, so many other girls and boys like her are harassed by cruel groups at school like the “Watermelon Girls” and are turned on by best friends or siblings. This book also demonstrates the relationships between sisters; even though sisters love each other, they can be brutally mean to each other because they know they’ll love each other no matter what.

In this scene of Freak, Miriam makes a spur of the moment decision and cuts off all of her hair. Overwhelmed with stress and pressure from peers, she sneaks into the bathroom with a pair of scissors in the nighttime while everyone is asleep and makes the dramatic change. “I took a handful of hair and started cutting. I liked the sound the scissors made. Snip. And a clump of hair fell to the ground at my feet. Snip, snip. And another, and another, until the floor around me was covered. It was amazing that all of it had come off of me. There was so much of it. Snip.” (p. 90) The large amount of hair that Miriam cut off was kind of like lifting a huge burden off of her back. Now that Miriam doesn’t have any hair to hide behind, she can reveal to her family and peers who she really is inside.

Freak is a book for someone who likes to relate to the story that they are reading and relate to characters in their book. It’s not hard to relate to Miriam because everybody has been teased or been left out at some point in their life. Girls would probably enjoy this book more than a boy would because it is narrated by a girl. This book is also not for someone who likes fantasy better than realistic fiction because this story is as realistic as it gets. This book doesn’t have any flaws and is written truthfully and poetically. The story of Freak is heartbreakingly realistic and spot on. Miriam is so easy to fall in love with, that it’s just as easy to fall in love with the book.