The Blue Dress

For fans of Jasmine Warga and Starfish, an Iranian American girl navigates complicated relationships with her mother, her best friend, and her body image in this unflinching and ultimately uplifting middle-grade debut.

Sometimes Yasmin feels like her body isn't hers. And it's not just because puberty has mounted a full-on alien invasion, or that emigrating from Iran a year-and-a-half ago has meant one change after another. It's also because her mother constantly pushes her to lose weight, like sewing Yasmin a beautiful blue dress for Persian New Year that is too tight on purpose.

At school, it doesn't help that Yasmin's best friend, Carmen, is petite and close to her own mother, or that popular-girl Zoe always has a mean comment to spare. Yasmin is sure her crush, Jack, won't ever like her the way she is, either.

With the pressure to fit in closing in on all sides, Yasmin starts taking desperate measures. But if being thin is supposed to make her happier, then why does losing weight feel like losing parts of herself, too?

From debut author Rebecca Morrison comes The Blue Dress, a heart-rending, funny, and hopeful book inspired by her own life, relatable to anyone who has ever needed to break away from someone else's vision of how they should look in order to embrace their true self.

Author: Rebecca Morrison
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)
Published: 03/24/2026
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.80w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780374393601
Audience: Ages 9-12


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/05/2026
School Library Journal 02/01/2026 pg. 51
Booklist 11/01/2025
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 01/01/2026
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/2026

About the Author
Rebecca Morrison is a lawyer and writer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, TODAY, NBC News, Salon, HuffPost and Newsweek, among others. She was born in Iran, and now lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and two kids. The Blue Dress is her debut novel.