Picture a Girl — Jenny Manzer

Key Selling Points
In their small coastal town, Addie lives with her mom and little brother...until her mom (who struggles with alcoholism and depression) leaves and Addie is forced to take care of herself and her brother, without anyone finding out.
Refusing the easy answers, Picture a Girl looks unflinchingly at the life of an 11-year-old girl who has learned to be an adult in her mother's absence and to lie to keep her family together.
Shows surfing in a less glamorous way, as Addie's mother's only true "happy place" and an obsession that can take precedence over her kids -- but also reveals it as a way forward for the family, after she returns and promises to give Addie and Billy regular surfing lessons.
Jenny Manzer is the author of Save Me, Kurt Cobain , which was nominated for the Bolen Books Children's Book Prize, and My Life as a Diamond , which was nominated for numerous awards and named one of Bank Street College of Education's Best Books of the Year.