You open your eyes slowly, feeling an undeniable clawing sensation in your stomach. Your eyes, wide and empty, stare into nothingness. Why are you so cold? You slowly get off of your warm and cozy bed and reach out to grab your winter coat. You stand up and all of a sudden, your head starts to spin. Confused, you flop back down on your bed, your heart racing. Huddling back into the blankets, you feel warmer. Safer. The clawing sensation blossoms into sharp pains, piercing your body. You smile, embracing the pain, and slip back into oblivion. You are Francesca Dietrich, a girl who is slowly starving herself into nothingness. Steven Levenkron takes a real life problem and weaves an intricate, heart wrenching novel, The Best Little Girl in the World, about Francesca, a child who has anorexia nervosa.
Francesca Dietrich is a fifteen year old girl at five-foot-four and ninety-eight pounds. Although Francesca is considered underweight by her doctor, she still compares her body to her fellow ballet classmates and the models in magazines. She follows the advice of her ballet teacher, and strives to become “slim and firm” to be a better dancer. She creates a new identity for herself, a person that she can be that is skinny and perfect: Kessa. Kessa is in control; Francesca is not. Kessa’s weight eventually drops so low, she has to be hospitalized. She sees all kinds of doctors and eventually meets a therapist, Sandy, who helps her come to terms with her parents and her weight.
Steven Levenkron is a psychotherapist and a writer known for his research into anorexia nervosa and self injury. He based Francesca on real-life patients that have anorexia nervosa and weaves a story around the problems that a person with an eating disorder has. In the story, he explains that people with anorexia could have the disorder because they want to retain a child-like body so they don’t have to worry their parents about growing up. Levenkron says this through Francesca’s talk with Sandy, her therapist.
Steven Levenkron’s writing style is to write in a quick succession of scenes to get the reader to understand the theme clearer, which I personally like. I like that the theme of the need for attention is reinforced throughout the entire novel. Levenkron does this by creating situations in which Francesca says clearly that she knows that her mother “does not love her and never will.” The story then is moved along smoothly. I also like Levenkron’s ability to change between scenes because it keeps the feelings that the reader feels intact.
  I took a liking to this book because it is very relatable to problems that most people deal with. This includes complications such as eating and weight issues, but he also includes issues that every child eventually has: desiring attention from their parents. Francesca is always the good and “delightful” child who doesn’t get involved in the battles between Hal (the dad), Grace (the mother), and Susanna (the sister). She is always off to some corner, not a part of her family, ignored because she doesn’t cause any trouble. Thus, she is ignored. “ ‘But why should I worry about Francesca?’ Harold persisted. ‘She’s always been such a delight.’ ‘What’s the point of being a delight, Mr. Dietrich, if she’s ignored for it’ ” (Levenkron 229)? This connects to a lot of children who are not struggling with anorexia or eating disorders. In general, attention is a very common problem that most children struggle with. By being the bad child, they get the attention that they crave, even if the kind of attention they’re getting isn’t good.
Overall, The Best Little Girl in The World is an insightful book to read. The novel is perfect for every teenager but I do not recommend this book for teens who are very sensitive to serious topics. The book is a melancholy and knowledge packed text for people who are interested in psychology and eating disorders. The book also reaches a major cliffhanger: Will Kessa ever recover from her eating disorder? Will she heal or die from her obsession?