Title: Spot the Difference
Author: Juno Dawson
Genre: Coming of Age, Self and Body Confidence
Tropes: Makeover transformation, peer pressure, first love, school elections, bullying
Taylor Swift Song: the archer
Other Songs: pretty isn’t pretty – Olivia Rodrigo, brave – Sara Bareilles
Series/ Standalone: Standalone short story for world book day 2016
The mirror. A reflection of our inner beauty or a portal into everything we’ve been taught to hate about the supposedly ‘broken’ person staring back at us.
For Avery Morgan, her acne, has made her hate herself whilst classmates bully her for how she looks affecting her own self condolence and self worth in Juno Dawson’s ‘Spot the Difference.’ Avery prefers to neither be seen or heard, depressed that people see the spots and not the person.
She has resigned herself to a daily routine of insults, invisibility and indifference to the school’s A-Listers. Avery believes her ‘broken’ skin is like a punishment, which comes with a ‘outcast’ status alongside her best friend Lois.
A trending new drug trial for acne offers an unexpected route out of Avery’s constant state of self loathing. The miraculous results finally give Avery a clear face, free of redness and spots. It also brings a newfound conscience in herself as the A-List, including her former best friend from primary Lucy and crush Seth to take notice.
She starts to change, on both the outside and inside. The newly transformed Avery embarks in her first relationship with a boy and puts herself in the running for the school elections to become the next head girl. Slowly she starts to become one of the A-List herself, and distancing herself from who she used to be and into who she used to envy. But is a ‘spotless’ face turning Avery into everything she once hated?
How does she know what the A-Lists intentions are? Do they like her for her or for her new found looks? That’s a question Avery discovers about herself the hard way in this ultra relatable coming of age story (it doesn’t just apply to teenagers but to young adults too). It’s a story about learning to love your so called ‘imperfections’ and releasing that people have more depth to them than at first glance, and seeing life isn’t always skin deep.
The moment that Avery breaks down crying in joy in front of the mirror, after seeing the acne drug work hits deep. It shows that all too knowing feeling of struggling with how you look for so long, that it’s overwhelming when something starts to go your way. Many others like Avery are no strangers to the knock on confidence that comes from something like acne, anxiety or whatever it may be. If you don’t feel good on the outside it makes it that much harder to believe there are good things on the inside.
When Avery releases she could have her acne free blast stripped away from her, she shatters into pieces. After all it was her new ‘spotless face’ that made her come to a profound realisation about herself.
“Suddenly I realise that it is not that I’ve never been brave, it’s that I’ve been in hiding. But now I have nothing to hide.”
Avery after leaving Head Girl Suriya Kair suggests she should run for to take over from her in ‘Spot the Difference’ by Juno Dawson.
This initial realisation does start to boast her confidence, and leads Avery to take more chances and enjoy her life. She gets together with Seth, has her first kiss and starts to reconnect with former friend Lucy. But her tears when realising she has to come off the acne drug may be over more than just spots. Avery’s character development from ‘outcast’ to A-List is one of peer pressure and misunderstanding how much better she thought she would become and feel after ‘fitting in’ with social standards of a ‘pretty face.” It escalates to the point where history repeats itself as she and Lucy grew apart after she joined the A-List and now the same thing happens with Lois.
The key moment for Avery seeing how she’s going too far is when she makes an insult about Lois’ arm, as one is slightly shorter than the other. Lois never let it pull her down, even telling Avery at the begging of the book that insults about her acne says more about them and nothing about her.
“It speaks only of their own insecurity that they feel the need to put others down.”
Lois to Avery over insults like ‘pizza face’ were made over her acne in ‘Spot the Difference’ by Juno Dawson.
Lois heard what Avery said as she was chilly towards the best friend who changed a soon as she fit the unfair standards of the A-Listers at school. She wants to make Avery feel bad for the insult. As soon as she hears her friends miracle drug has been stopped, she decides to help Avery with an intervention with Lucy.
Avery’s fall from the A-List comes after she must come off the acne drug trial.
“My on-off, love, hate, dysfunctional relationship with the mirror is back on.”
Avery after she gets the news that Vitamin A overdoes mean she must come off her ‘miracle’ acne drug in ‘Spot the Difference’ by Juno Dawson.
This brings back all the feelings of low self confidence and worth. It threatened the new found Confidence she found in herself after she stopped letting her acne hide her away from the world.
Avery’s character development is relatable to a lot of people, from teenagers to young adults in their twenties. And not just to acne suffered but to anyone who has something visible or not, that they hate about themselves and been riddled or discriminated for. Whether it be appearance, disability, mental health, illness, lack of popularity or relationship/social experience and the list goes on.
The journey of Avery into self acceptance reaches its peak, as she makes her final speech in her surge to forge ahead in the election race to become the new head girl.
“At least I can say I stood her as myself, the person I always was. ‘Imperfect, but content in my own skin.’”
Avery rounding off her head girl speech in front of her own class at school, in ‘Spot the Difference’ by Juno Dawson.
She wears a paper bag on her head to make a point during her speech. It’s one that shows how inspirational Avery is to readers like me. She tellers the people who looked down on her for her looks that she will make the school a safer place for those bullied, and inspiring confidence in others to be themselves. It all comes full circle when she uses her speech to say that her ‘spots’ do and should not determine how she should be treated, feel or what she is capable off.
When you slowly start to love yourself, in your own skins, ‘imperfections’ and all, in your way at your pace that’s when the magic truly begins to rise, just like a phoenix.
the girl and the city of books 
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