Like Vanessa Juvenile Fiction / Social Themes - Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance My disease is as rare

My disease is as rare as it is famous

And now that her parents are divorced

Association of Children's Booksellers Best Book

Her family was brutally murdered as she was dragged away to a slave ship and sent to be sold in the Carolinas

Like Vanessa Juvenile Fiction / Social Themes - Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance My disease is as rareMiddle graders will laugh and cry with thirteen year old Vanessa Martin as she tries to be like Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America. In this semi autobiographical debut novel set in 1983, Vanessa Martin's real life reality of living with family in public housing in Newark, New Jersey is a far cry from the glamorous Miss America stage. She struggles with a mother she barely remembers, a grandfather dealing with addiction and her own battle