The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet

By Jake Maia Arlow,

Book cover of The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet

Book description

Twelve-year-old Al Schneider is too scared to talk about the two biggest things in her life:

1. Her stomach hurts all the time and she has no idea why.
2. She's almost definitely 100% sure she likes girls.

So she holds it in... until she can't. After nearly having an…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The candor and vulnerability of seventh-grader Al Schneider grabbed me from the start. Her best and only friend is drifting away, she hasn’t told anyone she likes girls, and a constant urgent need to poop has taken over her life. When Al learns she has Crohn’s disease, she is terrified at first, but then the unexpected happens.

Her diagnosis brings a new group of friends into her life. They call themselves the Bathroom Club, and they’re warm, funny, understanding, and, above all, welcoming. What a gift to a kid who, until now, has found it “mortifying just to be alive…

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