A Post About "Hold Me Like A Breath" By Tiffany Schmidt

At some point during my academic career, it became required to do a Summer Reading project. Usually, you pick from a very limited set of books and everyone does the same project. Yeah, I know it doesn't sound interesting, but... actually, that's it. It wasn't fun.

This year was better, though. There were so many options when it came to our book list and we got a say in how we wanted to communicate about our books. If you haven't already guessed it, I chose to talk about my book through a blog post. I just created this website and I think this project is a perfect opportunity to add a little more content.

Without further ado, my Summer Reading Blog Post:

The book I chose was Hold Me Like a Breath by Tiffany Schmidt. The story revolves around a girl named Penelope Landlow. She is the daughter in one of the largest black market organ-selling families. The thing that really is a challenge for her is that she has a disease that makes her very susceptible to bruising and that any touch with too much pressure could send her to her death. In the story, her family gets murdered. Penelope escapes any threat from the killer by leaving her home. She ends up alone and afraid in New York City. Things escalate, she meets people, and the story continues through until she finds out who killed her family and why.

Now that there is a premise for the book, I'd like to get into what I think was really emphasized throughout the story: the importance of the human touch. Now, I'm not referring to just the kind of touch you receive from a romantic partner or anything like that, but more along the lines of every human touch. It could be holding hands with your mom as you walk across the street at age six or high-fiving a friend after they make a good play in baseball or giving someone a hug when they're feeling down. Human touch is so crucial to how we're socialized. This story highlights its importance by showing its absence. Penelope goes through life in a way that feels so isolated to her. After the death of her family, she wants to be comforted, to be held, but no one will because they are afraid of hurting her. Eventually, she doesn't tell someone about her disease and lets them hold her because she craves human touch so much that she can't bear to have him refuse.

This story shows how something as simple as human touch can be important by contrasting it with how a girl has always been "held like a breath". It is an example of how much we depend on the simple things to make us who we are.

Au revoir,

Abby

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