Question by AlsoknownasKate: Anyone know the title of a young adult fiction book about a young artist with an abusive alcoholic mother?

Thanks for the info but it’s not the blue mirror. This would have been about 20 years ago. I remember the girl lived on an apple orchard. Any idea where to look for a book if you don’t know the author or title?

Best answer:

Answer by blueowlboy
Koja, Kathe. The blue mirror – Brief Article – Young Adult Review – Book Review
Kliatt, March, 2004 by Claire Rosser

Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 119p. c2004. 0-374-30849-7. .00. S

Koja writes with great artistry–her words sometimes work as brushes creating paintings; her prose is close to poetry. This works well in her acclaimed YA novel Buddha Boy, about artists. The Blue Mirror is also about an adolescent artist who loses herself in the world she calls the Blue Mirror, the world she creates through her drawings. Maggie is 17 years old, confused and lonely as she lives with her alcoholic mother. She likes to hang out in a cafe in the evenings, escaping her home life that isn’t a home life. It’s there that she becomes aware of the homeless young people living on the streets, stealing, getting drugs, living on the edges of Maggie’s world. She draws them. She sees a beautiful young man and can’t resist getting to know him, falling in love with him, disregarding his weaknesses and his power over young street girls. Strangely, she is unable to draw him–a symptom of her blindness as to his true nature. Her friend at the cafe warns her, but she can’t see the truth. When the young man, Cole, invades the home Maggie and her mother share, then Maggie begins to see that she doesn’t belong to him really. Her eyes are opened and she is horrified at the cruelty with which he controls the girls around him. At this point, she is able to capture him in a drawing.

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