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Pearl loves watching the majestic loggerhead turtles and octopuses glide through the water at the aquarium. Pearl finds it especially easy to identify with the octopuses, who have millions of touch receptors all over their bodies. They feel everything. Sometimes, Pearl wishes she was more like a turtle, with a hard outer shell—it hurts too much to feel everything.
And the changes at the start of fifth grade don’t feel good to Pearl at all. New teachers, lockers, and being in different classes than her friends is unsettling. Pearl tries her best to pretend she’s fine, but she starts to struggle with things that used to come easy, like schoolwork, laughing and skateboarding with her best friend, Rosie, running and even sleeping.
After a disastrous parent-teacher conference, her parents decide to bring Pearl to Dr. Jill, who diagnoses her with depression. At first Pearl is resistant to Dr. Jill’s help; she doesn’t like feeling different, but she also doesn’t want to continue feeling so bad all the time. When Dr. Jill asks Pearl to try one Impossible Thing each day, like running, skateboarding, or walking her dog Tuck, she decides to try. For each impossible thing she attempts, Pearl puts a bead on a string. Bead by bead, and with the support of family and friends, Pearl finds her way back to herself. She discovers just like the moon is always there in the sky, even if it isn’t full, she’ll always be herself even when she doesn’t feel whole.
In this tender novel-in-verse, critically acclaimed author Bobbie Pyron draws from her own experiences to tell the story of a brave girl learning to take care of and love herself.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 25, 2025 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9798217017720
- File size: 126209 KB
- Duration: 04:22:52
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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November 25, 2024
As an aspiring marine biologist, 10-year-old Pearl Graham has always felt connected to the loggerhead turtles at the Florida aquarium where her mother works (their beaked noses and protective shells remind her of herself). But recently she has felt more like the exceptionally sensitive
octopus, with “no barrier between what an octopus feels and its world.” Previously enjoyable activities and traditions have become excruciating, and with the mean voice in her head getting louder, “pretending to be/ Used to Be Pearl” is draining, prompting Pearl to withdraw from her family and friends. She’s initially annoyed when her parents bring her to a therapist, but when she’s diagnosed with depression, she’s comforted by the fact that it’s a treatable illness “like diabetes or asthma.” As she comes to understand more about her diagnosis, Pearl learns to manage her “dark fog” and realizes that her beloved grandfather also has the same illness. Pyron (Stay) employs a raft of apt ocean similes to elucidate Pearl’s depression with complexity in this perceptive, instructive, and hopeful verse novel, taking care to note that the moon is always full, even when “we can’t see that from/ down here.” Characters read as white. Ages 10–up. Agent: Alyssa Eisner Henkin, Birch Path Literary.
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