Naked

Gr 9 Up—Anna ran away when she was 13 to New York City, and now, three years later, she has been found. Because she is underage, she has a chance at getting some help instead of being charged with prostitution and is sent back home. She hopes to make a fresh start without anyone finding out about her past. But then, notes begin showing up in her locker at school. As the story progresses, readers are given more background information as to how Anna ended up in this situation: an abusive father and a "boyfriend" in New York City who needed money. The teen begins to make good friends after her return home. It is her friends in the end who save her from a desperate confrontation with the person who knows her secret. Even her mom finds a way to stand up to Anna's father in order to help her. There are multiple issues with this book, however. Sarah, the social worker assigned to the protagonist, is too good to be true. It is hard to believe that someone working with a New York City case load would have the kind of 24-hour accessibility to Anna that she seems to have. Several figures in the story feel like caricatures—cops who beat girls, janitors who are dirty and uneducated and prey on children, an abusive father with no background as to what made him that way. Most of the women in the story are victims. Everyone who has sex in the story regrets it and wishes they had "saved" themselves. These factors made the work feel moralistic and didactic.