SuitabookSkim
Mariko Tamaki, Jillian Tamaki
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the young person, checking in around the suicide and depression material, then discussing boundaries, grief, friendship and how the ending treats Skim’s isolation.
- Themes
- Grief and school community: A classmate’s boyfriend dies by suicide, and the school responds with intense collective mourning while Skim faces her own emotional confusion. The book?s stance on this remains unclear.
- Secret relationship and boundaries: Skim begins meeting secretly with her English teacher, Ms Archer, during a period already described as emotionally difficult. The book?s stance on this remains unclear.
- Belonging and peer pressure: Skim feels isolated while her best friend Lisa tries to draw her into ordinary social life through a double-date. Friendship and popular peer culture appear to pull Skim in different directions, without enough detail to determine whether the story resolves or condemns those pressures.
- Worth knowing
- Be ready for emotionally heavy material involving suicide, depression, grief, homosexuality, romantic feelings, secrecy, social cliques and a relationship between a pupil and her teacher.