Many students are uncomfortable on Valentine's Day with the emphasis on love and romantic relationships, worried about feeling, or being, left out. "New research shows that teenagers by and large do not identify Valentine's Day as one of the most positive days.… Because social media is such a big part of their lives, they feel that Valentine's Day can be positive but mostly very hurtful."--Teen Talk
In preparation for this holiday, teachers can stress different types of peer relationships—not only crushes and love, but FRIENDSHIP—through reading novels in Book Club groups which provide safe spaces to discuss the complexities and benefits of all types of positive peer relationships.
These are examples of MG/YA novels that could be grouped for Book Club reading. As always, my list is created from novels I have read relatively-recently, many of which have been recently-published, and novels I can recommend for whole class and independent reading but especially Book Club reading.
Strategies for organizing, facilitating, teaching, and assessing Book Club reading are included in in my blog "The 5 Steps for Facilitating Book Clubs." More strategies, ideas, reproducibles, and a sample Book Club unit are included in Talking Texts: A Teachers' Guide to Book Clubs.
In preparation for this holiday, teachers can stress different types of peer relationships—not only crushes and love, but FRIENDSHIP—through reading novels in Book Club groups which provide safe spaces to discuss the complexities and benefits of all types of positive peer relationships.
These are examples of MG/YA novels that could be grouped for Book Club reading. As always, my list is created from novels I have read relatively-recently, many of which have been recently-published, and novels I can recommend for whole class and independent reading but especially Book Club reading.
Strategies for organizing, facilitating, teaching, and assessing Book Club reading are included in in my blog "The 5 Steps for Facilitating Book Clubs." More strategies, ideas, reproducibles, and a sample Book Club unit are included in Talking Texts: A Teachers' Guide to Book Clubs.
The Misfits, The Magical Imperfect*, Sweeping Up the Heart*, The Someday Suitcase*, A Place at the Table*, Two Naomis*, The Bridge Home*, Where the Heart Is*, The Season of Styx Malone*, To Night Owl from Dogfish*, Takedown, Ben Bee and the Teacher Griefer*, Ben Y and the Ghost in the Machine*, Jordan J and the Truth about Jordan J*, Worser*, Ghost, Crossing Jordan, Pieces of Georgia, Squint*, The Revealers*, After Tupac and D Foster, Forget Me Not*, Save Me a Seat*, Seven Clues to Home*, The Pumpkin War*, The Boy at the Back of the Class*, New Kid*, Born Behind Bars*, The Order of Things*, Every Shiny Thing*, Gracefully Grayson, Zara’s Rules for Record-Breaking Fun*, All of Me*, Rogue, Lily and Dunkin, The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise*, Drama, Harbor Me*, Consider the Octopus*, Anybody Here Seen Frenchie?*, Crashing in Love*, Breakout*, Mixed-Up*, The Unteachable*, Ungifted*, Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero*, Trowbridge Road*, Operation Do-Over*, Dear Student*, Camo Girl*, Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence*, Merci Suarez Plays It Cool*, Falling Short*, Hidden Truths*, In Your Shoes, The Secret of the Dragon Gems*, Virtually Me*, Redwood and Ponytail*, Eleanor & Park*, The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B*, Seedfolks, Forget Me Not*, Torch*, We Come Apart, We Are All We Have*, The Pull of Gravity, Ronit & Jamil, Keeping Pace, Free Throws, Friendship, and Other Things We Fouled Up; If You Come Softly, Refugees*, Loving vs Virginia, Turtles All the Way Down*, Paper Hearts, FreakBoy, The Memory of Things*, The Memory of Light, Love Jacaranda*, I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This, Hope and Other Punch Lines*, The Hate U Give, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, If I Was Your Girl, The Bridge*, Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda, Ramona Blue*, Junk Boy*, Your Heart-My Sky*, Wings in the Wild*, Wild Dreamers*, Saving Red, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Scars Like Wings*, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Forward Me Back to You*, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy & Goth Girl, Jumper*, Jackpot*
Pictured are 98 grade 4-12 novels featuring "Epic Loves, Likes, Crushes, Friendships, Buddies, Advocates, Companions, and Supporters." Seventy of my more-recently read are reviewed in the order pictured; see the asterisked titles in the caption.
The Magical Imperfect by Chris Baron
A golem is a creature formed out of a lifeless substance such as dust or earth that is brought to life by ritual incantations and sequences of Hebrew letters. The golem, brought into being by a human creator, becomes a helper, a companion, or a rescuer of an imperiled Jewish community.
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Stan Lee once said, “If you don’t care about the characters, you can’t care about the story.” And I do look for characters I care about; in fact; sometimes I just want to take care of them. Even though I fell in love with them, there is no need in Chris Baron’s new verse novel; the two main characters, Etan and Malia, take care of each other quite well.
Etan is part of a close community of emigrés from Prague, the Philippines, China, and other countries who, with his grandfather, sailed on the Calypso and entered America through the Angel Island Immigration Center in 1940. Etan needs the support of his community when his mother goes to a mental hospital and he loses the ability speak—except sometimes. In addition, his father appears to have lost his Jewish faith, and the community Sabbat dinners end. Etan finds comfort in his religious grandfather and his jewelry shop which appear to be the heart of the community.
Etan doesn’t play with the other boys at school since his mother left, and, when on a delivery errand, he meets Malia who has been homeschooled since she was bullied and called “the creature.” Malia’s severe eczema keeps her in the house or covered up from the sun with her Blankie. However, as he becomes friends with her, Etan believes that his grandfather’s ancient muds will cure Malia’s condition or bring a golem to help them out.
“Etan, there are many things
from the old world
from your ancestors
that we carry with us always.
It’s our fire. Our light.
But there are somethings from those times that are still with us.” (114)
When the mud doesn’t work permanently, Mrs. Li tells Etan,
“Your friendship for this girl is the oldest
and strongest form of medicine you can ever give her.
Remind her that she is not alone.” (161)
His grandfather agrees,
“…each of us has his own story.
You have a chance to be the light, to help a friend.” (178)
Etan helps Malia find her voice, and, when the earthquake nearly destroys the city, the community joins together, and Etan former friend Jordan and the bully Martin also contribute.
At the same time, his grandfather acknowledges that Etan is nearing the age of thirteen, the age of Bar Mitzvah and becoming a man, and he gives Etan family artifacts that he had brought from Prague to “connect you to the old world like a bridge, to remind you of where you came from and who you are, and that anything is possible.” (298) This gives Etan the idea of how to help put things back together.
“The old and the new mix together,
making something
completely new,
making something
together.” (323)
Set during the October 17, 1989, San Francisco earthquake and the legendary Game 3 of the World Series between the Giants and the A’s, this story is magical but certainly not imperfect.
A memorable story of friendship, community, Jewish traditions, Filipino culture, and healing.
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A golem is a creature formed out of a lifeless substance such as dust or earth that is brought to life by ritual incantations and sequences of Hebrew letters. The golem, brought into being by a human creator, becomes a helper, a companion, or a rescuer of an imperiled Jewish community.
---------
Stan Lee once said, “If you don’t care about the characters, you can’t care about the story.” And I do look for characters I care about; in fact; sometimes I just want to take care of them. Even though I fell in love with them, there is no need in Chris Baron’s new verse novel; the two main characters, Etan and Malia, take care of each other quite well.
Etan is part of a close community of emigrés from Prague, the Philippines, China, and other countries who, with his grandfather, sailed on the Calypso and entered America through the Angel Island Immigration Center in 1940. Etan needs the support of his community when his mother goes to a mental hospital and he loses the ability speak—except sometimes. In addition, his father appears to have lost his Jewish faith, and the community Sabbat dinners end. Etan finds comfort in his religious grandfather and his jewelry shop which appear to be the heart of the community.
Etan doesn’t play with the other boys at school since his mother left, and, when on a delivery errand, he meets Malia who has been homeschooled since she was bullied and called “the creature.” Malia’s severe eczema keeps her in the house or covered up from the sun with her Blankie. However, as he becomes friends with her, Etan believes that his grandfather’s ancient muds will cure Malia’s condition or bring a golem to help them out.
“Etan, there are many things
from the old world
from your ancestors
that we carry with us always.
It’s our fire. Our light.
But there are somethings from those times that are still with us.” (114)
When the mud doesn’t work permanently, Mrs. Li tells Etan,
“Your friendship for this girl is the oldest
and strongest form of medicine you can ever give her.
Remind her that she is not alone.” (161)
His grandfather agrees,
“…each of us has his own story.
You have a chance to be the light, to help a friend.” (178)
Etan helps Malia find her voice, and, when the earthquake nearly destroys the city, the community joins together, and Etan former friend Jordan and the bully Martin also contribute.
At the same time, his grandfather acknowledges that Etan is nearing the age of thirteen, the age of Bar Mitzvah and becoming a man, and he gives Etan family artifacts that he had brought from Prague to “connect you to the old world like a bridge, to remind you of where you came from and who you are, and that anything is possible.” (298) This gives Etan the idea of how to help put things back together.
“The old and the new mix together,
making something
completely new,
making something
together.” (323)
Set during the October 17, 1989, San Francisco earthquake and the legendary Game 3 of the World Series between the Giants and the A’s, this story is magical but certainly not imperfect.
A memorable story of friendship, community, Jewish traditions, Filipino culture, and healing.
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Sweeping Up the Heart by Kevin Henkes
Amelia’s mother died when she was too young to remember her, so she has not missed her or grieved her death—at least not like her father, the Professor, who has an inability to express his love—and his thoughts. As in the Emily Dickinson poem, Amelia presumes he went through “Sweeping up the Heart and putting Love away.” (50) Luckily, Amelia has been raised by a neighbor who comes to the house each day and loves Amelia as if her own.
But during Spring Break, twelve-year-old Amelia’s life begins to change. She has become used to being alone, throwing herself into her small sculptures, since her best friend turned Mean Girl. “’I never liked that kid,’ her father said…. ‘I thought she was a miserable soul.’” (175). When Amelia meets her art teacher’s nephew, Casey, they become fast friends with a hint of something more. Meanwhile Casey is working on preventing his parents impending divorce and has his own sweeping up the heart (literally, a sculpture he made to save the marriage).
Looking out the restaurant window where they imagine lives for the passersby, Amelia notices a woman who looks like her mother and even resembles Amelia herself. Casey, full of imagination, suggests that it is her mother’s spirit, and Amelia takes this to the next step—What if her mother didn’t really die? As she begins to imagine life with her mother, she feels the grief she has been spared. The woman turns out not to be her mother, but is someone who might be able to heal their family. “Although this wasn’t the spring break she’d wanted, she wouldn’t change it.” (179)
I have read Kevin Henkes’ picture books, and I felt the same language and structure in this book. This is a novel about complex emotions and relationships but written simply in lovely language with characters who immediate became part of my heart.
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Amelia’s mother died when she was too young to remember her, so she has not missed her or grieved her death—at least not like her father, the Professor, who has an inability to express his love—and his thoughts. As in the Emily Dickinson poem, Amelia presumes he went through “Sweeping up the Heart and putting Love away.” (50) Luckily, Amelia has been raised by a neighbor who comes to the house each day and loves Amelia as if her own.
But during Spring Break, twelve-year-old Amelia’s life begins to change. She has become used to being alone, throwing herself into her small sculptures, since her best friend turned Mean Girl. “’I never liked that kid,’ her father said…. ‘I thought she was a miserable soul.’” (175). When Amelia meets her art teacher’s nephew, Casey, they become fast friends with a hint of something more. Meanwhile Casey is working on preventing his parents impending divorce and has his own sweeping up the heart (literally, a sculpture he made to save the marriage).
Looking out the restaurant window where they imagine lives for the passersby, Amelia notices a woman who looks like her mother and even resembles Amelia herself. Casey, full of imagination, suggests that it is her mother’s spirit, and Amelia takes this to the next step—What if her mother didn’t really die? As she begins to imagine life with her mother, she feels the grief she has been spared. The woman turns out not to be her mother, but is someone who might be able to heal their family. “Although this wasn’t the spring break she’d wanted, she wouldn’t change it.” (179)
I have read Kevin Henkes’ picture books, and I felt the same language and structure in this book. This is a novel about complex emotions and relationships but written simply in lovely language with characters who immediate became part of my heart.
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The Someday Suitcase by Corey Ann Haydu
Friend. We use this word casually. Almost everyone we meet and like is identified as a “friend.” We have Facebook Friends we have never met. And young teens have a new BFF every week, it seems. But in The Someday Suitcase, readers meet true best friends, friends that readers will fall in love with.
When Clover learns the word “symbiosis” in science, her favorite class [“It refers to a relationship where two organisms or creatures are benefitting from each other and surviving together.… They’re dependent on each other” (7)], she has found a word that perfectly described her friendship with Danny. Sometimes they form two halves of a whole; sometimes they are exactly the same. Clover is practical; Danny is fun. Her favorite subjects are science and math; he is better at English and social studies. When they close their eyes and play statute, they make the exact same shape. Every time. The two fifth-graders have “the world’s closest best friendship.” (2)
When Danny gets sick, really sick, Clover decides “I am going to make my science fair project all about Danny.” (54) She will use science to find out what is wrong with him, something the doctors don’t seem able to do. All they know is that when he is with Clover, he feels better. “Maybe this is who I’m meant to be—a person who makes other people feel better.” (150)
Living in Florida, the two friends have always wanted to see snow. In fact, Clover’s father, a truck driver, brings her snow globes from each trip. When Danny’s mysterious illness worsens, they buy a someday suitcase. “It’s for when we go to the snow.” (114)
With Danny missing so much school, Clover begins making friends of her own, and the mother of one of her new friends explains that with science, there is also “room for faith and religion.” (174). When Clover and Danny set their sights on a clinic in Vermont where they think Danny can be cured (and where they can finally see snow), they experience the magic of their friendship: “Until it’s proven false, anything is possible. Even magic.” (209)
Clover is strong for Danny, but readers will realize also just how strong Danny is for Clover. This is a sweet, heartbreaking story about friendship, “a magical friendship…. Love with a twist.” (263)
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Friend. We use this word casually. Almost everyone we meet and like is identified as a “friend.” We have Facebook Friends we have never met. And young teens have a new BFF every week, it seems. But in The Someday Suitcase, readers meet true best friends, friends that readers will fall in love with.
When Clover learns the word “symbiosis” in science, her favorite class [“It refers to a relationship where two organisms or creatures are benefitting from each other and surviving together.… They’re dependent on each other” (7)], she has found a word that perfectly described her friendship with Danny. Sometimes they form two halves of a whole; sometimes they are exactly the same. Clover is practical; Danny is fun. Her favorite subjects are science and math; he is better at English and social studies. When they close their eyes and play statute, they make the exact same shape. Every time. The two fifth-graders have “the world’s closest best friendship.” (2)
When Danny gets sick, really sick, Clover decides “I am going to make my science fair project all about Danny.” (54) She will use science to find out what is wrong with him, something the doctors don’t seem able to do. All they know is that when he is with Clover, he feels better. “Maybe this is who I’m meant to be—a person who makes other people feel better.” (150)
Living in Florida, the two friends have always wanted to see snow. In fact, Clover’s father, a truck driver, brings her snow globes from each trip. When Danny’s mysterious illness worsens, they buy a someday suitcase. “It’s for when we go to the snow.” (114)
With Danny missing so much school, Clover begins making friends of her own, and the mother of one of her new friends explains that with science, there is also “room for faith and religion.” (174). When Clover and Danny set their sights on a clinic in Vermont where they think Danny can be cured (and where they can finally see snow), they experience the magic of their friendship: “Until it’s proven false, anything is possible. Even magic.” (209)
Clover is strong for Danny, but readers will realize also just how strong Danny is for Clover. This is a sweet, heartbreaking story about friendship, “a magical friendship…. Love with a twist.” (263)
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A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
“Elizabeth turns again to look at me, her face slightly shocked. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything much in class before. She gives me a thumbs up. Raising my hand in class, making friends with Elizabeth and Micah; I’m very different from the girl I was at the start of sixth grade.” (211)
“I have to talk to you. About what happened at the mall.… Sara is my friend. You shouldn’t have spoken to her like that. And I heard what you said to Ahsan yesterday…. There’s a difference between being mean and being racist, Mads.” (223-224)
Sixth grade is challenging. Sara had to leave her small Muslim school and enter a large middle school where the kids know each other and there are very few Muslim students. And to make matters worse, her mother runs the cooking club, teaching them to cook South Asian food from her native Pakistan.
The year becomes equally challenging for Elizabeth. She is the child of a British mother who has been depressed since her own mother’s death and a Jewish American father who travels all the time for his job. “Why can’t I have normal parents? A mom who remembers things like cookies for synagogue. A dad who’s home and can remind her.” (165) And her best friend Maddy becomes friends with Stephanie and begins spouting her parents’ racist remarks at Sara.
When Sara and Elizabeth become cooking partners and then friends, they both undergo change. Sara learns she doesn’t have to stay invisible, and Elizabeth learns to stand up for what she feels is right, especially for friends. “If we’re going to be real friends, not just cooking partners, that means we stick up for each other.” (149) Sara and Elizabeth may come from different cultures but they have much in common, such as mothers who are both studying to take their citizenship test. Children of immigrants in neighborhoods where the Christmas lights cover houses, they both feel different from those in their community, other than Micah, their Jewish half-Latino friend.
Through cooking and combining cultures for a cooking contest recipe, they discover friendship and that others, such as Maddy and Stephanie, are not always what they assumed.
Written in alternating chapters by two authors who mirror their characters, Sara and Elizabeth will help 4th- 8th grade readers build conversations about friendships, prejudice, and following passions.
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“Elizabeth turns again to look at me, her face slightly shocked. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything much in class before. She gives me a thumbs up. Raising my hand in class, making friends with Elizabeth and Micah; I’m very different from the girl I was at the start of sixth grade.” (211)
“I have to talk to you. About what happened at the mall.… Sara is my friend. You shouldn’t have spoken to her like that. And I heard what you said to Ahsan yesterday…. There’s a difference between being mean and being racist, Mads.” (223-224)
Sixth grade is challenging. Sara had to leave her small Muslim school and enter a large middle school where the kids know each other and there are very few Muslim students. And to make matters worse, her mother runs the cooking club, teaching them to cook South Asian food from her native Pakistan.
The year becomes equally challenging for Elizabeth. She is the child of a British mother who has been depressed since her own mother’s death and a Jewish American father who travels all the time for his job. “Why can’t I have normal parents? A mom who remembers things like cookies for synagogue. A dad who’s home and can remind her.” (165) And her best friend Maddy becomes friends with Stephanie and begins spouting her parents’ racist remarks at Sara.
When Sara and Elizabeth become cooking partners and then friends, they both undergo change. Sara learns she doesn’t have to stay invisible, and Elizabeth learns to stand up for what she feels is right, especially for friends. “If we’re going to be real friends, not just cooking partners, that means we stick up for each other.” (149) Sara and Elizabeth may come from different cultures but they have much in common, such as mothers who are both studying to take their citizenship test. Children of immigrants in neighborhoods where the Christmas lights cover houses, they both feel different from those in their community, other than Micah, their Jewish half-Latino friend.
Through cooking and combining cultures for a cooking contest recipe, they discover friendship and that others, such as Maddy and Stephanie, are not always what they assumed.
Written in alternating chapters by two authors who mirror their characters, Sara and Elizabeth will help 4th- 8th grade readers build conversations about friendships, prejudice, and following passions.
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Two Naomis by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Audrey Vernick
Divorce can be complicated and messy, but the two Naomis’ parents have both made the transition as smooth as possible for their children. Naomi Marie’s dad lives nearby and even though Naomi E’s mother lives across the country in California, they Skype every week and she is coming back for a month in the summer.
What isn’t as simple is divorced parents dating. When Tom and Vivian’s relationship becomes “very serious,” they want their two families—and their two ten-year-old Naomis—to meet and become friends. Less excited about this are the two Naomis, especially when they find out their parents want one of them to alter her name because there can’t be two “Naomis,” and they can’t call them White Naomi and Black Naomi as Naomi Marie’s little sister Bri sometimes does.
As they resist their parents’ dinners, family meet-ups, and then a girls’ coding club where the girls will be partners in a project, they find that they just actually might like each other—a little, and, even through somewhat different, they are more alike. “’I’m realizing something,’ I [Naomi E.] tell Annie, ‘I actually like her. I was so mad at Dad about everything that I was almost refusing to let her be my friend, you know?’” (166)
When Naomi Marie worries about Tom trying to take her father’s place, and things changing, Dad says, “We can each shine our own light without dimming anyone else’s…. Sometimes there’s more room in our lives than we realize.” (149)
This delightful novel, narrated in alternating chapters by Naomi Marie and Naomi E, is about family, change, divorce-dating-remarriage, friendship, and acceptance.
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Divorce can be complicated and messy, but the two Naomis’ parents have both made the transition as smooth as possible for their children. Naomi Marie’s dad lives nearby and even though Naomi E’s mother lives across the country in California, they Skype every week and she is coming back for a month in the summer.
What isn’t as simple is divorced parents dating. When Tom and Vivian’s relationship becomes “very serious,” they want their two families—and their two ten-year-old Naomis—to meet and become friends. Less excited about this are the two Naomis, especially when they find out their parents want one of them to alter her name because there can’t be two “Naomis,” and they can’t call them White Naomi and Black Naomi as Naomi Marie’s little sister Bri sometimes does.
As they resist their parents’ dinners, family meet-ups, and then a girls’ coding club where the girls will be partners in a project, they find that they just actually might like each other—a little, and, even through somewhat different, they are more alike. “’I’m realizing something,’ I [Naomi E.] tell Annie, ‘I actually like her. I was so mad at Dad about everything that I was almost refusing to let her be my friend, you know?’” (166)
When Naomi Marie worries about Tom trying to take her father’s place, and things changing, Dad says, “We can each shine our own light without dimming anyone else’s…. Sometimes there’s more room in our lives than we realize.” (149)
This delightful novel, narrated in alternating chapters by Naomi Marie and Naomi E, is about family, change, divorce-dating-remarriage, friendship, and acceptance.
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The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman
The novel is written as a letter by Viji to her younger sister. Viji and Rukku, who has a mental disability, run away from their physically abusive father when their mother forgives him time after time. Viji says, “Our togetherness was one of the few things I had faith in.” (2) Homeless, they join two boys, Muthu and Arul who live on a bridge, and the four of them become a family. They live day-to-day, picking through trash to sell recyclable materials, refusing to become beggars. Arul notices that Rukku can do more than Viji thinks and gives her small responsibilities, letting her feel valued. “…he’d seen something in you that I hadn’t bothered to notice.” (64) In fact, Rukku sells the bead necklaces she has been making for more money than they have had so far.
After they lose their “home,” they move to a graveyard infested with mosquitoes and Rukku and Muthu become ill. Viji decides to trust and seek help from Celina Aunty, a woman who runs a home for working children, but Rukku dies, and Viji blames herself. It takes time, but Celina Aunty convinces her that even if she has no faith in religion, she should learn to “have faith in the goodness within yourself.” (161) When Arul tells her, “Start giving thanks for what you do have.… You’re here in this home with a chance to do something more with your life. You have Celina Aunty. You have me. You have Muthu. Most of all, you have yourself.” (164)
Writing to her sister, Viji travels back, but she also can now move forward, imaging herself as the teacher she always wanted to be with new friends and her family, Arul and Muthu.
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The novel is written as a letter by Viji to her younger sister. Viji and Rukku, who has a mental disability, run away from their physically abusive father when their mother forgives him time after time. Viji says, “Our togetherness was one of the few things I had faith in.” (2) Homeless, they join two boys, Muthu and Arul who live on a bridge, and the four of them become a family. They live day-to-day, picking through trash to sell recyclable materials, refusing to become beggars. Arul notices that Rukku can do more than Viji thinks and gives her small responsibilities, letting her feel valued. “…he’d seen something in you that I hadn’t bothered to notice.” (64) In fact, Rukku sells the bead necklaces she has been making for more money than they have had so far.
After they lose their “home,” they move to a graveyard infested with mosquitoes and Rukku and Muthu become ill. Viji decides to trust and seek help from Celina Aunty, a woman who runs a home for working children, but Rukku dies, and Viji blames herself. It takes time, but Celina Aunty convinces her that even if she has no faith in religion, she should learn to “have faith in the goodness within yourself.” (161) When Arul tells her, “Start giving thanks for what you do have.… You’re here in this home with a chance to do something more with your life. You have Celina Aunty. You have me. You have Muthu. Most of all, you have yourself.” (164)
Writing to her sister, Viji travels back, but she also can now move forward, imaging herself as the teacher she always wanted to be with new friends and her family, Arul and Muthu.
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Where the Heart Is by Jo Knowles
“When you learn vocabulary words in school, you memorize the definition. And you have a good idea of what the words mean. But it’s not until you feel them that you really grasp the definition. I have known what the word ‘helpless’ means for a long time. And ‘desperate.’ But I’ve never felt them. Feeling them is different. They fill your chest with a horrible sense of ‘dread’ and ‘guilt’ and ‘despair.’ Those are more vocabulary words that you can’t fully understand until you feel them. (246)
The summer before eighth grade is full of changes for Rachel. She turns 13; she has a job working with animals on her wealthy neighbors’ “farm;” her relationship with Micah changes when she realizes she only wants to remain best friends, not start dating him; she questions her sexual orientation when she realizes that her feelings when she is with Cybil are how she used to feel with Micah; and although her family has always been relatively poor since her mother lost her job, the bank is foreclosing and they are losing their house. If home is where the heart is, as her sister’s pillow proclaims, what defines a home.
In this novel by author Jo Knowles, some readers will seem themselves represented and others will learn empathy for those whose lives may leave them feeling helpless and desperate, as is the case with too many of our adolescents who are in situations they cannot control.
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“When you learn vocabulary words in school, you memorize the definition. And you have a good idea of what the words mean. But it’s not until you feel them that you really grasp the definition. I have known what the word ‘helpless’ means for a long time. And ‘desperate.’ But I’ve never felt them. Feeling them is different. They fill your chest with a horrible sense of ‘dread’ and ‘guilt’ and ‘despair.’ Those are more vocabulary words that you can’t fully understand until you feel them. (246)
The summer before eighth grade is full of changes for Rachel. She turns 13; she has a job working with animals on her wealthy neighbors’ “farm;” her relationship with Micah changes when she realizes she only wants to remain best friends, not start dating him; she questions her sexual orientation when she realizes that her feelings when she is with Cybil are how she used to feel with Micah; and although her family has always been relatively poor since her mother lost her job, the bank is foreclosing and they are losing their house. If home is where the heart is, as her sister’s pillow proclaims, what defines a home.
In this novel by author Jo Knowles, some readers will seem themselves represented and others will learn empathy for those whose lives may leave them feeling helpless and desperate, as is the case with too many of our adolescents who are in situations they cannot control.
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The Season of Styx Malone by Kekla Magoon
“Styx Malone didn’t believe in miracles, but he was one. Until he came along, there was nothing very special about life in Sutton, Indiana.” (1) The first page just keeps getting better until the last line seals the deal—“It all started the moment I broke the cardinal rule of the Franklin household: Leave well enough alone.” (1)
Kekla Magoon has been one of my favorite authors. One of the YA novels I recommend the most to high school, college, and even law school students is How It All Went Down. I have written about her middle school novel Camo Girl in “Books to Begin Conversations about Bullying [http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/books-to-begin-conversations-about-bullying-by-lesley-roessing], so I was excited to hear about her new novel The Season of Styx Malone.
Ten-year-old narrator Caleb Franklin and his eleven year old brother Booby Gene live in a small town and their father does not allow them to venture out from where everyone knows them and they are “safe.” Caleb’s goal is to get to the museum in Indy. And to be extraordinary, not “extra-ordinary” as he thinks his father is calling him.
Then the brothers meet a mysterious sixteen-year-old name Styx Malone, Yes, as in Greek mythology, where the River Styx separated the world of the living from the world of the dead. Malone may not be their transport from the dead to the living but it sure seems so. Styx is free from parental restraints and always has a plan that becomes bigger and better. “The moment felt like Saturday, like summer heat, like adventure…. It felt like the soft swish of corn tassels and being one step closer to an impossible dream…’One step closer to our happy ending.’” (116)
As the boys become more and more involved with him, providing the friendship it appears he is missing in his life, they learn that he is a foster child who has moved from home to home, family to family, and his life may not be as glamorous as it seems. “’Only person you can ever count on is yourself.’…There were lots of people I could count on…. But I got what Styx was saying: Freedom came with a price.” (154)
Many things changed the season Styx Malone “shook [their] world.” That summer did make a difference—to Styx himself and to expanding the world of the Franklins.
There were many interesting, delightful characters, including Cory Cromier, the eleven-year-old bully who loves babies and becomes a Franklin brothers’ ally, and Pixie, Styx’s magical ten-year-old foster sister. This book, with its short chapters, each ending with seductive lines. and prospective discussions of morality, ethics, responsibility, friendship, and family, would make a good read aloud for grades 5-8.
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“Styx Malone didn’t believe in miracles, but he was one. Until he came along, there was nothing very special about life in Sutton, Indiana.” (1) The first page just keeps getting better until the last line seals the deal—“It all started the moment I broke the cardinal rule of the Franklin household: Leave well enough alone.” (1)
Kekla Magoon has been one of my favorite authors. One of the YA novels I recommend the most to high school, college, and even law school students is How It All Went Down. I have written about her middle school novel Camo Girl in “Books to Begin Conversations about Bullying [http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/books-to-begin-conversations-about-bullying-by-lesley-roessing], so I was excited to hear about her new novel The Season of Styx Malone.
Ten-year-old narrator Caleb Franklin and his eleven year old brother Booby Gene live in a small town and their father does not allow them to venture out from where everyone knows them and they are “safe.” Caleb’s goal is to get to the museum in Indy. And to be extraordinary, not “extra-ordinary” as he thinks his father is calling him.
Then the brothers meet a mysterious sixteen-year-old name Styx Malone, Yes, as in Greek mythology, where the River Styx separated the world of the living from the world of the dead. Malone may not be their transport from the dead to the living but it sure seems so. Styx is free from parental restraints and always has a plan that becomes bigger and better. “The moment felt like Saturday, like summer heat, like adventure…. It felt like the soft swish of corn tassels and being one step closer to an impossible dream…’One step closer to our happy ending.’” (116)
As the boys become more and more involved with him, providing the friendship it appears he is missing in his life, they learn that he is a foster child who has moved from home to home, family to family, and his life may not be as glamorous as it seems. “’Only person you can ever count on is yourself.’…There were lots of people I could count on…. But I got what Styx was saying: Freedom came with a price.” (154)
Many things changed the season Styx Malone “shook [their] world.” That summer did make a difference—to Styx himself and to expanding the world of the Franklins.
There were many interesting, delightful characters, including Cory Cromier, the eleven-year-old bully who loves babies and becomes a Franklin brothers’ ally, and Pixie, Styx’s magical ten-year-old foster sister. This book, with its short chapters, each ending with seductive lines. and prospective discussions of morality, ethics, responsibility, friendship, and family, would make a good read aloud for grades 5-8.
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To Night Owl from Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Bett and Avery couldn’t be more different. Bett is a California girl and loves sports—especially water sports, animals, and taking risks. Avery, a New Yorker, plans to become a writer and suffers from anxiety and worries about germs, drowning, and whatever else she reads or hears about—and she is a planner. Bett is African American, and Avery is Jewish. The two meet through email when Bett discovers their single parents—both fathers—have been dating and are sending the twelve-year-olds to the same summer camp, hoping to form a family. The girls do not want to meet or become friends or especially a family, and they strategize to sabotage their fathers’ plan.
What follows is a year and a half of emails and letters, even though the girls do meet at camp, get themselves thrown out, become friends, and even each the support system of the other. The fathers’ relationship does not fare as well and that becomes another challenge for these two who now view themselves as sisters in an extended family that spanned the country but appears to have become centered in NYC and now includes a mother and grandmother.
When I first saw that the entire story was a series of emails and letters, I thought I would be disappointed, but the novel was mesmerizing as the plot twisted and turned, personalities were revealed, new characters entered and sent their own missives to each other and to the girls, and I actually feel that there might have been more character and plot development in this well-written offering by two authors, Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Woliitzer.
Bett and Avery find that, even though they are nothing alike, they complement each other, and whether their fathers become a family or not, they have already done so.
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Bett and Avery couldn’t be more different. Bett is a California girl and loves sports—especially water sports, animals, and taking risks. Avery, a New Yorker, plans to become a writer and suffers from anxiety and worries about germs, drowning, and whatever else she reads or hears about—and she is a planner. Bett is African American, and Avery is Jewish. The two meet through email when Bett discovers their single parents—both fathers—have been dating and are sending the twelve-year-olds to the same summer camp, hoping to form a family. The girls do not want to meet or become friends or especially a family, and they strategize to sabotage their fathers’ plan.
What follows is a year and a half of emails and letters, even though the girls do meet at camp, get themselves thrown out, become friends, and even each the support system of the other. The fathers’ relationship does not fare as well and that becomes another challenge for these two who now view themselves as sisters in an extended family that spanned the country but appears to have become centered in NYC and now includes a mother and grandmother.
When I first saw that the entire story was a series of emails and letters, I thought I would be disappointed, but the novel was mesmerizing as the plot twisted and turned, personalities were revealed, new characters entered and sent their own missives to each other and to the girls, and I actually feel that there might have been more character and plot development in this well-written offering by two authors, Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Woliitzer.
Bett and Avery find that, even though they are nothing alike, they complement each other, and whether their fathers become a family or not, they have already done so.
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BenBee and the Teacher Griefer by K.A. Holt
Four rising 7th graders. Video Gamers. Divergent thinkers assigned to a summer school class. And a teacher who needs to teach them to read well enough to pass the FART (Florida Rigorous Academic Assessment Test), a teacher who is willing to meet her students half way, a teacher who shifts from a Teacher Griefer to a Gaming Legend, a teacher who learns that mastering Human Being Assessment Test skills is more important than Reading and Writing Assessment skills.
Four kids who become “Not besties. But not nothings.” (211ARC) Four children who I fell in love with as they discover their strengths individually and together through the willingness of a teacher to become a learner.
Written in the students’ four voices in free verse, stream-of-consciousness, and drawings, and through game chats, the story will appeal to divergent upper elementary and middle-grade readers.
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Four rising 7th graders. Video Gamers. Divergent thinkers assigned to a summer school class. And a teacher who needs to teach them to read well enough to pass the FART (Florida Rigorous Academic Assessment Test), a teacher who is willing to meet her students half way, a teacher who shifts from a Teacher Griefer to a Gaming Legend, a teacher who learns that mastering Human Being Assessment Test skills is more important than Reading and Writing Assessment skills.
- Benjamin Bellows aka Sandbox Gamer Ben Bee whose weak writing skills are overcome with a 504 Plan and a typewriter. “”I’ve been thinking: finally something to help me do better, not Why now, not what’s wrong.” (206ARC)
- Benita Ybarra aka Sandbox Gamer ObenwhY who is struggling with grief and loss. “But when you crash your car, you don’t have extra lives saved, stored up, hoarded. You have nothing that can blink you back to life.” (189ARC) but who learns to trust and heal “I look up at her, as I pull this moment even tighter, a soft blanket of now becoming a bandage holding together the crack in my heart.” (191ARC)
- Jordan Jackson aka Sandbox Gamer JORJORDANJMAGEDDON, diagnosed with ADHD, friendly, funny, and obsessed with a television dance contest show—and with Spartacus.
- New student Javier Jimenez aka Sandbox Gamer jajajavier who has a secret as to why he hides behind a hoodie and refuses to read aloud. “I think I finally have friends” (266ARC)
- Teacher Jordan Jackson (no relation) aka Sandbox Gamer JJ11347 whose job is in jeopardy after she allows the students to read a book based on Sandbox instead of Oliver Twist, a divergent teacher. “you’re right, though she’s a divergent teacher she teaches differently she, like, listens to us.” (247ARC)
Four kids who become “Not besties. But not nothings.” (211ARC) Four children who I fell in love with as they discover their strengths individually and together through the willingness of a teacher to become a learner.
Written in the students’ four voices in free verse, stream-of-consciousness, and drawings, and through game chats, the story will appeal to divergent upper elementary and middle-grade readers.
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Ben Y and the Ghost in the Machine by K.A. Holt
In BenBee and the Teacher Griefer, readers were introduced to “the kids under the stairs”—Ben B, Jordan, Javier, and Benita Ybarra, or Ben Y as she refers to herself—and their summer school teacher, Ms. J. In this sequel, the story focuses on Ben Y who is still grieving her older brother Benicio’s death a year before. Readers learn that Benacio was the creator of Sandman, the video game in which the four misfits became friends with each other and their teacher (whom they taught the game). It is also this game though which Ben Y and her brother communicated when he moved away to expand the market for his corporate backers.
SCHOOL
Who chooses
Who decides
Who is cool
And who is weird
And who is dumb
And who is smart
And who fits here
And who fits there
And what is right
And what is wrong? (214)
School is tough. The kids, other than her three new friends, are unkind, and the Vice Principal, Mr. Mann, is a bully, but there is a new student, Ace, who is not afraid to stand up to him and doesn’t appear to care what the other kids think. In fact she is called Dress Code for constantly breaking the dress code and earning detentions and Mr. Mann’s anger—and Ben Y’s admiration.
And sometimes
you see someone
or meet someone
and you hear al little
*ping*
in your heart,
and you know,
just like that,
this is someone
who’s like you,
boom. (77)
When Ben Y accidentally over-processes her hair in an attempt to be more like Ace and has to shave her head, the bullying increases.
and maybe
just maybe
the safety
of being the same
is better than
the danger
of being you. (119)
Even realizing he is dead, Ben Y retreats into game-chat conversations with her brother, and when it appears that someone is answering her as SB10BEN, she tries to solves the mystery; however, when she discovers the answer, she is not quite sure how she feels about the imposter.
At the same time Ben Y becomes so obsessed with finding out how Mr. Mann, adolescent defender of human rights, has become the bully he now is and with ruining his reputation and while also trying to understand her ambivalent feelings for Ace, that she forgets her three good friends. “It feels really bad to feel invisible to the person you thought could see you the best of any other person in the world.” – Jordan (358)
In a year filled with grieving family members, complicated relationships, looking for “safe places,” and somewhat of an identity crisis, Ben Y learns the value of friendship and that “everything is better with a confetti cannon.” – Ms J, Sandbox player.
Many readers will see themselves—and others may learn some empathy for their peers who feel they may not fit in but may need to—in K.A. Holt’s newest free verse and game-talk novel.
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In BenBee and the Teacher Griefer, readers were introduced to “the kids under the stairs”—Ben B, Jordan, Javier, and Benita Ybarra, or Ben Y as she refers to herself—and their summer school teacher, Ms. J. In this sequel, the story focuses on Ben Y who is still grieving her older brother Benicio’s death a year before. Readers learn that Benacio was the creator of Sandman, the video game in which the four misfits became friends with each other and their teacher (whom they taught the game). It is also this game though which Ben Y and her brother communicated when he moved away to expand the market for his corporate backers.
SCHOOL
Who chooses
Who decides
Who is cool
And who is weird
And who is dumb
And who is smart
And who fits here
And who fits there
And what is right
And what is wrong? (214)
School is tough. The kids, other than her three new friends, are unkind, and the Vice Principal, Mr. Mann, is a bully, but there is a new student, Ace, who is not afraid to stand up to him and doesn’t appear to care what the other kids think. In fact she is called Dress Code for constantly breaking the dress code and earning detentions and Mr. Mann’s anger—and Ben Y’s admiration.
And sometimes
you see someone
or meet someone
and you hear al little
*ping*
in your heart,
and you know,
just like that,
this is someone
who’s like you,
boom. (77)
When Ben Y accidentally over-processes her hair in an attempt to be more like Ace and has to shave her head, the bullying increases.
and maybe
just maybe
the safety
of being the same
is better than
the danger
of being you. (119)
Even realizing he is dead, Ben Y retreats into game-chat conversations with her brother, and when it appears that someone is answering her as SB10BEN, she tries to solves the mystery; however, when she discovers the answer, she is not quite sure how she feels about the imposter.
At the same time Ben Y becomes so obsessed with finding out how Mr. Mann, adolescent defender of human rights, has become the bully he now is and with ruining his reputation and while also trying to understand her ambivalent feelings for Ace, that she forgets her three good friends. “It feels really bad to feel invisible to the person you thought could see you the best of any other person in the world.” – Jordan (358)
In a year filled with grieving family members, complicated relationships, looking for “safe places,” and somewhat of an identity crisis, Ben Y learns the value of friendship and that “everything is better with a confetti cannon.” – Ms J, Sandbox player.
Many readers will see themselves—and others may learn some empathy for their peers who feel they may not fit in but may need to—in K.A. Holt’s newest free verse and game-talk novel.
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Jordan J and the Truth about Jordan J by K.A. Holt
I let the music fill me up with its rhythms and feelings,
like I’m the only person in the whole world who can really
understand what it’s trying to say,
like the music itself trusts ME, Jordan J,
to use my super-sweet dance moves
to translate the story it wants the world to know,
like the music and I are dance partners,
but also storyteller partners,
and everything else in the whole universe,
even my own feelings and thoughts,
pauses,
so that for two minutes
I am the music
And the music is me
And together we just…tell a really awesome story. (79-80)
In K.A Holt’s BenBee and the Teacher Griefer readers met four rising 7th graders: Ben Bellows, Benita Ybarra, Jordan Jackson, and Javier Jimenez. All video gamers. Divergent thinkers who met and became friends through an assigned summer school class. And their teacher, Jordan Jackson (no relation to student gamer Jordan Jackson). Benbee was essentially Ben Bellows’ story as the sequel, Ben Y and the Ghost in the Machine, was Benita Ybarra’s story.
In Jordan J and the Truth about Jordan J, readers become much better acquainted with Jordan Jackson who has been diagnosed with ADHD and is obsessed—to put it mildly—with a television dance contest show, Fierce Across America. As passionate as he is about dance, he cannot help but criticize the Hart Rocketeers in his column for the Hart Times encouraging them to take it up a notch with “fierce energy and better dance routines” to beat their competition, although he is impressed with one of the dancers, Casey Price.
When Jordan discovers that his city, Freshwater, Florida, has become an audition site for the 15th season of Fierce Across America, he prepares to dance for his life. His audition fails to go as he planned. Veronica Verve is overwhelmed with his Dance Vision,
YOUR DANCE VISION IS…
I’VE GOT NO WORDS FOR IT, NUMBER 1313…
LIKE PRODIGY-LEVEL I’VE-GOT-NO-WORDS-FOR-IT, KID.
I’VE HONESTLY NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS.
IN MY ENTIRE DANCING CAREER. (84)
Unfortunately, she also tells him that his “DANCING SKILLS ARE SIX OUT OF TEN, AT BEST,” which means no callbacks. Not knowing what ‘prodigy’ means and devastated, Jordan “think[s] about going home and digging a giant hole in the backyard and living in that hole forever.” (92) But with the help of Ben Y and Mrs. J (who is now the school librarian), some of his confidence returns and he choreographs a routine—full of his super-sweet dance moves—for Casey, who did make it to callbacks and considers Jordan is part of her ”team.” While this helps Jordan to feel a small part of FAA, he still is jealous and sad: “It’s weird to feel so happy and excited but also feel kind of…the opposite of that, all at the same time.” (191) It also takes time away from his art classes with Javier (and Carol and Carole) and their Bro Time, which makes him less of a friend, something else he needs to repair.
Although events do not play out as expected, Jordan has a plan to fix what he can—and plenty to tell Mo, his therapist.
This is a story for kids who have a passion, kids who may need to become a little more sensitive to the needs of others, and kids who are unique in their own ways, and it is KA Holt telling another “really awesome story” in a multi-formatted text.
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I let the music fill me up with its rhythms and feelings,
like I’m the only person in the whole world who can really
understand what it’s trying to say,
like the music itself trusts ME, Jordan J,
to use my super-sweet dance moves
to translate the story it wants the world to know,
like the music and I are dance partners,
but also storyteller partners,
and everything else in the whole universe,
even my own feelings and thoughts,
pauses,
so that for two minutes
I am the music
And the music is me
And together we just…tell a really awesome story. (79-80)
In K.A Holt’s BenBee and the Teacher Griefer readers met four rising 7th graders: Ben Bellows, Benita Ybarra, Jordan Jackson, and Javier Jimenez. All video gamers. Divergent thinkers who met and became friends through an assigned summer school class. And their teacher, Jordan Jackson (no relation to student gamer Jordan Jackson). Benbee was essentially Ben Bellows’ story as the sequel, Ben Y and the Ghost in the Machine, was Benita Ybarra’s story.
In Jordan J and the Truth about Jordan J, readers become much better acquainted with Jordan Jackson who has been diagnosed with ADHD and is obsessed—to put it mildly—with a television dance contest show, Fierce Across America. As passionate as he is about dance, he cannot help but criticize the Hart Rocketeers in his column for the Hart Times encouraging them to take it up a notch with “fierce energy and better dance routines” to beat their competition, although he is impressed with one of the dancers, Casey Price.
When Jordan discovers that his city, Freshwater, Florida, has become an audition site for the 15th season of Fierce Across America, he prepares to dance for his life. His audition fails to go as he planned. Veronica Verve is overwhelmed with his Dance Vision,
YOUR DANCE VISION IS…
I’VE GOT NO WORDS FOR IT, NUMBER 1313…
LIKE PRODIGY-LEVEL I’VE-GOT-NO-WORDS-FOR-IT, KID.
I’VE HONESTLY NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS.
IN MY ENTIRE DANCING CAREER. (84)
Unfortunately, she also tells him that his “DANCING SKILLS ARE SIX OUT OF TEN, AT BEST,” which means no callbacks. Not knowing what ‘prodigy’ means and devastated, Jordan “think[s] about going home and digging a giant hole in the backyard and living in that hole forever.” (92) But with the help of Ben Y and Mrs. J (who is now the school librarian), some of his confidence returns and he choreographs a routine—full of his super-sweet dance moves—for Casey, who did make it to callbacks and considers Jordan is part of her ”team.” While this helps Jordan to feel a small part of FAA, he still is jealous and sad: “It’s weird to feel so happy and excited but also feel kind of…the opposite of that, all at the same time.” (191) It also takes time away from his art classes with Javier (and Carol and Carole) and their Bro Time, which makes him less of a friend, something else he needs to repair.
Although events do not play out as expected, Jordan has a plan to fix what he can—and plenty to tell Mo, his therapist.
This is a story for kids who have a passion, kids who may need to become a little more sensitive to the needs of others, and kids who are unique in their own ways, and it is KA Holt telling another “really awesome story” in a multi-formatted text.
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Worser by Jennifer Ziegler
“He thought of Mr. Murray’s parting quip: ‘Go home before you can’t recognize your family anymore.’” (98)
Will Orser, unfortunately nicknamed Worser by his classmates when his name was listed as W. Orser, is a wordsmith. Everything about words and wordplay intrigues him. And he used to share this passion with his mother. But Professor Orser suffered a severe stroke and has not only lost her speech but the person she once was, and Worser’s life has changed (or become worser).
Worser’s father died when he was four, and it has been just his mother and him. Until now. Aunt Iris has moved in, and with all her quirkiness and “smothering,” has taken over the household. She has not only filled the living room with her p-ohms (sculptures for meditating), but she washes the clothes that have been sitting in a laundry basket for who-knows-how-long, buys Worser new clothes that fit and are more fashionable, and, worse of all, has his mother singing and laughing. “What did he want? Worser stared at his sullen expression in the mirror. He wanted to go back to before his mother’s stroke, that’s what.” (109)
But Worser is also changing. Always a loner who sought solitude, he starts hanging out more with Herbie, also an outsider. When the school library closes, he is forced to find a new place to work on his Masterwork of words. He bargains for a table in the Re-Visions Book Store owned by the sullen and unfriendly Mr. Murray and develops a crush on Donya Khoury, leader of the school Lit Club. When the Lit Club needs a meeting place, Worser talks Mr. Murray into letting them meet at Re-Visions, and, surprisingly, he becomes part of the group. “Worser headed out of the bookstore feeling changed. It was a mood he hadn’t experienced in quite a while. He pondered the right word as he headed home.…There was only one word that could be right. A word he wouldn’t have thought possible—especially since his mother’s illness. ‘Happy.’” (135)
But Donya starts hanging out with Turk, Worser’s bully (or so he feels) and a mangler of language (or so it appears); his mother’s recovery will be taking longer than hoped; and everything starts going downhill—until Worser commits an act that has significant repercussions‚ both negative and positive.
This is a story about learning to accept help. Worser, renamed Worder acknowledges, “We can speak about the future, but the verb doesn’t change from its present-tense form. It’s only though the use of auxiliary verbs like ‘will’ that we denote future tense.…The only way we can get out of the present and into the future is with help.” (234)
This is a story with well-developed characters about having parents with challenges, friendship, loss, and acceptance and will be a mirror and a map for some of our readers and a window for others, creating empathy for their peers.
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“He thought of Mr. Murray’s parting quip: ‘Go home before you can’t recognize your family anymore.’” (98)
Will Orser, unfortunately nicknamed Worser by his classmates when his name was listed as W. Orser, is a wordsmith. Everything about words and wordplay intrigues him. And he used to share this passion with his mother. But Professor Orser suffered a severe stroke and has not only lost her speech but the person she once was, and Worser’s life has changed (or become worser).
Worser’s father died when he was four, and it has been just his mother and him. Until now. Aunt Iris has moved in, and with all her quirkiness and “smothering,” has taken over the household. She has not only filled the living room with her p-ohms (sculptures for meditating), but she washes the clothes that have been sitting in a laundry basket for who-knows-how-long, buys Worser new clothes that fit and are more fashionable, and, worse of all, has his mother singing and laughing. “What did he want? Worser stared at his sullen expression in the mirror. He wanted to go back to before his mother’s stroke, that’s what.” (109)
But Worser is also changing. Always a loner who sought solitude, he starts hanging out more with Herbie, also an outsider. When the school library closes, he is forced to find a new place to work on his Masterwork of words. He bargains for a table in the Re-Visions Book Store owned by the sullen and unfriendly Mr. Murray and develops a crush on Donya Khoury, leader of the school Lit Club. When the Lit Club needs a meeting place, Worser talks Mr. Murray into letting them meet at Re-Visions, and, surprisingly, he becomes part of the group. “Worser headed out of the bookstore feeling changed. It was a mood he hadn’t experienced in quite a while. He pondered the right word as he headed home.…There was only one word that could be right. A word he wouldn’t have thought possible—especially since his mother’s illness. ‘Happy.’” (135)
But Donya starts hanging out with Turk, Worser’s bully (or so he feels) and a mangler of language (or so it appears); his mother’s recovery will be taking longer than hoped; and everything starts going downhill—until Worser commits an act that has significant repercussions‚ both negative and positive.
This is a story about learning to accept help. Worser, renamed Worder acknowledges, “We can speak about the future, but the verb doesn’t change from its present-tense form. It’s only though the use of auxiliary verbs like ‘will’ that we denote future tense.…The only way we can get out of the present and into the future is with help.” (234)
This is a story with well-developed characters about having parents with challenges, friendship, loss, and acceptance and will be a mirror and a map for some of our readers and a window for others, creating empathy for their peers.
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Squint by Shelly Brown and Chad Morris
“So hit me with your best challenge for spreading kindness…. A challenge that helps people relate to people…. Share a little piece of yourself, like I did, and let us get to know and love you.” (238) These final words from Danny, a boy who suffered and died from progeria, guide Flint and McKell in their search for acceptance and belief in themselves.
Flint, nicknamed Squint because he has an eye disease that compromises his eyesight, has two goals: to win a comic book contest and make friends in middle school.
McKell is a new student from a school where she had few friends. In Flint’s school she hangs out with the popular kids who bully Squint. But McKell befriends Squint, and they encourage each other to attempt something new and follow their passions, following her brother’s Danny’s video challenges.
When Squint adds Diamond, a female superhero hero, to aid Flint’s comic book hero also named Squint, he supports McKell in overcoming her fear of sharing her talent. As they step out of their comfort zones, Squint confronts his bullies and finds that relationships are not always what you think they are.
This is a powerful novel about trust in others and trust in oneself and about adolescents learning to be themselves as they navigate middle school with all its rules. I was hoping for some comics (graphics) to go along with the story, but the Squint does share the text of his comic book as he creates it.
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“So hit me with your best challenge for spreading kindness…. A challenge that helps people relate to people…. Share a little piece of yourself, like I did, and let us get to know and love you.” (238) These final words from Danny, a boy who suffered and died from progeria, guide Flint and McKell in their search for acceptance and belief in themselves.
Flint, nicknamed Squint because he has an eye disease that compromises his eyesight, has two goals: to win a comic book contest and make friends in middle school.
McKell is a new student from a school where she had few friends. In Flint’s school she hangs out with the popular kids who bully Squint. But McKell befriends Squint, and they encourage each other to attempt something new and follow their passions, following her brother’s Danny’s video challenges.
When Squint adds Diamond, a female superhero hero, to aid Flint’s comic book hero also named Squint, he supports McKell in overcoming her fear of sharing her talent. As they step out of their comfort zones, Squint confronts his bullies and finds that relationships are not always what you think they are.
This is a powerful novel about trust in others and trust in oneself and about adolescents learning to be themselves as they navigate middle school with all its rules. I was hoping for some comics (graphics) to go along with the story, but the Squint does share the text of his comic book as he creates it.
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The Revealers by Doug Wilhelm
It is imperative that teachers and students discuss bullying more in schools, especially in the middle grades where research shows that the most bullying takes place. And not only in the Friday Advisement class meetings, but more effectively though novels and memoirs. And it is important to show how building friendships and collaboration help to stop bulling actions.
The Revealers would be a great choice for a middle school whole-class read or included with 4-5 other novels that address bullying for students to read and discuss in book clubs, comparing issues raised with books being read by all the book clubs. There are many advantages to reading this novel. Bullying is the entire focus of the novel—not just a side issue. The story emphasizes the efficacy of cooperative action when three students who are bullied collaborate on facing bullying with nonviolent action, scientifically studying why students bully. They share, and others begin sharing, their stories as victims and bullies to be posted on school-wide media.
The book highlights creative solutions to problems, using the scientific method, and the three students’ research—in cooperation with many members of the student body, including the school’s most feared bully—becomes a science fair exhibit which brings the problem to the notice of the principal and a school board member. The novel highlights the problem of administrative denial and even acceptance, which, unfortunately, is too realistic.
As I wrote in No More “Us” and “Them”: Classroom Lessons & Activities to Promote Peer Respect, “There are many ways for teachers to use literature in the classroom to facilitate building respect both for other students and for other peoples and to help their students acquire self-respect. Stories give readers different perspectives and can place them in positions and situations in which they have never been; stories let the readers take part in experiences outside their realms.”
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It is imperative that teachers and students discuss bullying more in schools, especially in the middle grades where research shows that the most bullying takes place. And not only in the Friday Advisement class meetings, but more effectively though novels and memoirs. And it is important to show how building friendships and collaboration help to stop bulling actions.
The Revealers would be a great choice for a middle school whole-class read or included with 4-5 other novels that address bullying for students to read and discuss in book clubs, comparing issues raised with books being read by all the book clubs. There are many advantages to reading this novel. Bullying is the entire focus of the novel—not just a side issue. The story emphasizes the efficacy of cooperative action when three students who are bullied collaborate on facing bullying with nonviolent action, scientifically studying why students bully. They share, and others begin sharing, their stories as victims and bullies to be posted on school-wide media.
The book highlights creative solutions to problems, using the scientific method, and the three students’ research—in cooperation with many members of the student body, including the school’s most feared bully—becomes a science fair exhibit which brings the problem to the notice of the principal and a school board member. The novel highlights the problem of administrative denial and even acceptance, which, unfortunately, is too realistic.
As I wrote in No More “Us” and “Them”: Classroom Lessons & Activities to Promote Peer Respect, “There are many ways for teachers to use literature in the classroom to facilitate building respect both for other students and for other peoples and to help their students acquire self-respect. Stories give readers different perspectives and can place them in positions and situations in which they have never been; stories let the readers take part in experiences outside their realms.”
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Forget Me Not by Ellie Terry
Seventh grade is hard to navigate, even when you are not different.
Jinsong is the president of student body, and even though he has faced prejudice in his past, he is now one of the popular seventh graders. When Calliope June moves in next door, with her weird clothing and tics, he immediately likes her. But does he like her enough to risk his standing with his "friends," who are bullying Callie and some of whom have turned on him in the past?
Callie has moved ten times during her life—every time her mother finds and breaks up with a new boyfriend. Diagnosed with Tourettes syndrome, it is hard enough to fit in and make friends, especially since her doctor told her it would be better not to tell anyone.
So Callie dresses to draw attention to her clothes and tries to hide her Tourettes (which only backfires) as she desperately tries to make friends—until she meets Jinsong and Ms. Baumgartner, the school counselor. Callie moves for an 11th time, leaving a legacy of tolerance and acceptance, at least between Beatriz and Jinsong—and ready to share her whole self with her new friends. "Because wouldn't/ talking/ about something/ make it better understood?"
The reader learns about Callie, her past, her present, her future dreams, through her free-verse chapters and about Jinsong through his short prose. This is a perfect novel for reluctant readers as it is very short but leaves much to discuss (and contains both a male and female main character). Author Ellie Askeroth Terry's shares her own experience in this debut novel.
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Seventh grade is hard to navigate, even when you are not different.
Jinsong is the president of student body, and even though he has faced prejudice in his past, he is now one of the popular seventh graders. When Calliope June moves in next door, with her weird clothing and tics, he immediately likes her. But does he like her enough to risk his standing with his "friends," who are bullying Callie and some of whom have turned on him in the past?
Callie has moved ten times during her life—every time her mother finds and breaks up with a new boyfriend. Diagnosed with Tourettes syndrome, it is hard enough to fit in and make friends, especially since her doctor told her it would be better not to tell anyone.
So Callie dresses to draw attention to her clothes and tries to hide her Tourettes (which only backfires) as she desperately tries to make friends—until she meets Jinsong and Ms. Baumgartner, the school counselor. Callie moves for an 11th time, leaving a legacy of tolerance and acceptance, at least between Beatriz and Jinsong—and ready to share her whole self with her new friends. "Because wouldn't/ talking/ about something/ make it better understood?"
The reader learns about Callie, her past, her present, her future dreams, through her free-verse chapters and about Jinsong through his short prose. This is a perfect novel for reluctant readers as it is very short but leaves much to discuss (and contains both a male and female main character). Author Ellie Askeroth Terry's shares her own experience in this debut novel.
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Save Me a Seat by Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan
All students and teachers should read Save Me a Seat, a novel about bullies, victims, and bullying. In this novel, Joe, a student with APD or Auditory Processing Disorder, is bullied by his fellow fifth graders, especially Dillon Samreen. When Ravi moves from India to America, he assumes that the other fifth graders will be impressed by his intelligence and athleticism, but all they notice is his accent and other ways he is different. Ravi assumes that DIllion, being Indian American, will be his friend, but finds himself also the target of his bullying and his classmates laughter.
There are many novels that focus on bullying, but what I found most important about Save Me a Seat is that Ravi does not realize that in his school in India where he is was one of the popular crowd, if not a bully himself, he was unkind to other students and stood by, laughing, when students were bullied by others. Just this last weekend I posted an article “10 Realities about Bullying at School and Online” https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/0...
which says that many bullies and also victims of bullying do not recognize that bullying is occurring. “What the Olweus survey identifies as the top three types of bullying—verbal abuse, exclusion, and spreading rumors—kids can see as normal and essentially harmless behavior.”
In the novel when Ravi finally sees that "There is more to [Joe] than meets the eye" and he is the victim of bullying; he comes to the conclusion, “I don’t need to show off anymore. I’m not like Dillon Samreen and I never will be,” and he stands up for Joe.
A study conducted by The Youth Voice Project, the first known large-scale research project that solicited students’ perceptions about strategy effectiveness to reduce peer mistreatment in our schools, found, “Our students report that asking for and getting emotional support and a sense of connection has helped them the most among all the strategies we compared” and conversely, “Peers were reported as being able to have a significant negative effect by blaming or making fun of mistreated youth.” (Roessing, No More “Us” and “Them”: Classroom Lessons & Activities to Promote Peer Respect).
The characters in Save Me a Seat are fifth graders, According to research, most bullying occurs in grades 6-8; perhaps if enough students read and discuss this novel in fifth grade, those statistics will change.
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All students and teachers should read Save Me a Seat, a novel about bullies, victims, and bullying. In this novel, Joe, a student with APD or Auditory Processing Disorder, is bullied by his fellow fifth graders, especially Dillon Samreen. When Ravi moves from India to America, he assumes that the other fifth graders will be impressed by his intelligence and athleticism, but all they notice is his accent and other ways he is different. Ravi assumes that DIllion, being Indian American, will be his friend, but finds himself also the target of his bullying and his classmates laughter.
There are many novels that focus on bullying, but what I found most important about Save Me a Seat is that Ravi does not realize that in his school in India where he is was one of the popular crowd, if not a bully himself, he was unkind to other students and stood by, laughing, when students were bullied by others. Just this last weekend I posted an article “10 Realities about Bullying at School and Online” https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/0...
which says that many bullies and also victims of bullying do not recognize that bullying is occurring. “What the Olweus survey identifies as the top three types of bullying—verbal abuse, exclusion, and spreading rumors—kids can see as normal and essentially harmless behavior.”
In the novel when Ravi finally sees that "There is more to [Joe] than meets the eye" and he is the victim of bullying; he comes to the conclusion, “I don’t need to show off anymore. I’m not like Dillon Samreen and I never will be,” and he stands up for Joe.
A study conducted by The Youth Voice Project, the first known large-scale research project that solicited students’ perceptions about strategy effectiveness to reduce peer mistreatment in our schools, found, “Our students report that asking for and getting emotional support and a sense of connection has helped them the most among all the strategies we compared” and conversely, “Peers were reported as being able to have a significant negative effect by blaming or making fun of mistreated youth.” (Roessing, No More “Us” and “Them”: Classroom Lessons & Activities to Promote Peer Respect).
The characters in Save Me a Seat are fifth graders, According to research, most bullying occurs in grades 6-8; perhaps if enough students read and discuss this novel in fifth grade, those statistics will change.
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Seven Clues to Home by Gae Polisner and Nora Raleigh Baskin
“But something else is pulling at me, knocking around in my insides, starting out like a whisper, like a song I sang all the time, but now I forget the words.
‘Remember?’
‘Do you remember those times I was happy?’
‘I do.’” (146)
Joy and Lukas met in second grade when, celebrating those with summer birthdays, they discovered their August birthdays were two days apart. And they became best friends for five years. They even knew they would always be best friends, “Keepers of Secrets, Wizards of Clues, Growers of Gardens, King and Queen of Summer Birthdays, Holders of Hearts” (193)
But “there are some moments that change everything…” (157)
When Lukas died on Joy’s twelfth birthday, she lives through a year of pain and grief. On her thirteenth birthday, she decides to follow the clues that, as was their tradition, Lukas had left for her birthday the previous year.
This captivating novel which grabbed my heart and squeezed it, as I wanted to keep reading but couldn’t face ending and leaving these characters, is written in alternating chapters narrated by Joy and Lukas. Readers follow Lukas though the day before Joy’s birthday as he hides the clues leading to her present and wrestles with giving her the heart necklace that will declare his new feelings, fearful that she will not feel the same. Readers shadow Joy as she escapes the house and follows the clues around town. “I don’t think I’ve been on my own, unaccounted for, this long in my whole life. But it feels good. Kind of like being let out after being hidden away—even if I did the hiding myself—like the sky clearing, and the air smells so fresh.” (133) We experience the depth of their friendship through memories and the commitment to the birthday clues. We also meet the family and townspeople who loved them.
There are moments that change everything and books that change everything. Seven Clues will be that book for many readers, especially those experiencing loss.
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“But something else is pulling at me, knocking around in my insides, starting out like a whisper, like a song I sang all the time, but now I forget the words.
‘Remember?’
‘Do you remember those times I was happy?’
‘I do.’” (146)
Joy and Lukas met in second grade when, celebrating those with summer birthdays, they discovered their August birthdays were two days apart. And they became best friends for five years. They even knew they would always be best friends, “Keepers of Secrets, Wizards of Clues, Growers of Gardens, King and Queen of Summer Birthdays, Holders of Hearts” (193)
But “there are some moments that change everything…” (157)
When Lukas died on Joy’s twelfth birthday, she lives through a year of pain and grief. On her thirteenth birthday, she decides to follow the clues that, as was their tradition, Lukas had left for her birthday the previous year.
This captivating novel which grabbed my heart and squeezed it, as I wanted to keep reading but couldn’t face ending and leaving these characters, is written in alternating chapters narrated by Joy and Lukas. Readers follow Lukas though the day before Joy’s birthday as he hides the clues leading to her present and wrestles with giving her the heart necklace that will declare his new feelings, fearful that she will not feel the same. Readers shadow Joy as she escapes the house and follows the clues around town. “I don’t think I’ve been on my own, unaccounted for, this long in my whole life. But it feels good. Kind of like being let out after being hidden away—even if I did the hiding myself—like the sky clearing, and the air smells so fresh.” (133) We experience the depth of their friendship through memories and the commitment to the birthday clues. We also meet the family and townspeople who loved them.
There are moments that change everything and books that change everything. Seven Clues will be that book for many readers, especially those experiencing loss.
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The Pumpkin War by Cathleen Young
This novel has everything. It has Billie, a twelve-year old girl who is a bee keeper and also raises pumpkins so she can enter the annual Pumpkin Race, who is so fiercely competitive that she has been mad at her best friend for a year because he may have cheated to win last year’s Pumpkin Race even though she has a wall of first-place ribbons. It has her little sister who has determined that the family will no longer eat meat. It has the neighbor children who raise llamas and are able to be friends with both Billie and Sam. There is Billie’s Ojibwe grandmother and mother and her Irish father—and the mysterious storytelling Irish grandfather who suddenly appears. And there is Sam, who just may have cheated to win the last Pumpkin Race but remains still a loyal and always-helpful friend until he no longer can. And there is lots and lots of science—horticulture, entomology, astronomy, and physics.
Readers follow Billie as she looks into her heart and begins to question her priorities. Cathleen Young’s new novel is a terrific read about friendship and family relationships and would also provide a great read-aloud for science class.
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This novel has everything. It has Billie, a twelve-year old girl who is a bee keeper and also raises pumpkins so she can enter the annual Pumpkin Race, who is so fiercely competitive that she has been mad at her best friend for a year because he may have cheated to win last year’s Pumpkin Race even though she has a wall of first-place ribbons. It has her little sister who has determined that the family will no longer eat meat. It has the neighbor children who raise llamas and are able to be friends with both Billie and Sam. There is Billie’s Ojibwe grandmother and mother and her Irish father—and the mysterious storytelling Irish grandfather who suddenly appears. And there is Sam, who just may have cheated to win the last Pumpkin Race but remains still a loyal and always-helpful friend until he no longer can. And there is lots and lots of science—horticulture, entomology, astronomy, and physics.
Readers follow Billie as she looks into her heart and begins to question her priorities. Cathleen Young’s new novel is a terrific read about friendship and family relationships and would also provide a great read-aloud for science class.
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The Boy at the Back of the Room by Onjali Q. Rauf
I read this darling, wonderful novel that deals with important issues—diversity, bullying, intolerance, and refugee children—in one day because I didn’t want to stop reading. I fell in love with the narrator right away, a British 9-year-old upstander.
A new student joins Alexa’s class, but he doesn’t talk to anyone, he disappears during every recess, and he has a woman who helps him with his work. And even though she has what some might term a challenging life herself—her father died when she was younger, her mum works two jobs to make ends meet and isn’t at home very much, and they have to be really careful about spending money, Alexa never sounds like she is complaining. Alexa and her three best friends, Josie, Tom, and Michael, a very diverse group of 9-year-olds, make it their mission to become friends with Ahmet. They give him gifts and then invite him to play soccer, where he excels, and they try to keep him safe from Bernard the Bully and his racist remarks and threats, which, it turns out, Ahmet can handle.
When they learn that Ahmet is a refugee from Syria, escaping on foot and in a lifeboat from bad people and bombs, the four friends are concerned. But when Alexa learns that his little sister died on the crossing and Ahmet does not know where his parents are and then learns from the news that the border is closing to refugees the next week, she puts a plan, the Greatest Idea in the World, in motion. She will ask the Queen to find Ahmet’s parents and keep the border open for them. When that plan seems to fail, the friends move on to the Emergency Plan.
I found it amazing that a novel on such a complicated subject could be handled so well and so thoroughly in a book for readers age 8-13. This book indeed will generate important conversations—and maybe some research and news article reading.
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I read this darling, wonderful novel that deals with important issues—diversity, bullying, intolerance, and refugee children—in one day because I didn’t want to stop reading. I fell in love with the narrator right away, a British 9-year-old upstander.
A new student joins Alexa’s class, but he doesn’t talk to anyone, he disappears during every recess, and he has a woman who helps him with his work. And even though she has what some might term a challenging life herself—her father died when she was younger, her mum works two jobs to make ends meet and isn’t at home very much, and they have to be really careful about spending money, Alexa never sounds like she is complaining. Alexa and her three best friends, Josie, Tom, and Michael, a very diverse group of 9-year-olds, make it their mission to become friends with Ahmet. They give him gifts and then invite him to play soccer, where he excels, and they try to keep him safe from Bernard the Bully and his racist remarks and threats, which, it turns out, Ahmet can handle.
When they learn that Ahmet is a refugee from Syria, escaping on foot and in a lifeboat from bad people and bombs, the four friends are concerned. But when Alexa learns that his little sister died on the crossing and Ahmet does not know where his parents are and then learns from the news that the border is closing to refugees the next week, she puts a plan, the Greatest Idea in the World, in motion. She will ask the Queen to find Ahmet’s parents and keep the border open for them. When that plan seems to fail, the friends move on to the Emergency Plan.
I found it amazing that a novel on such a complicated subject could be handled so well and so thoroughly in a book for readers age 8-13. This book indeed will generate important conversations—and maybe some research and news article reading.
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New Kid by Jerry Craft
Jordan leaves his neighborhood each day to attend seventh grade at Riverdale Academy Day School (although he would rather go to an art school) which is not as diverse as he would like and he is not sure he will fit in. In fact he is beginning to not fit in with his neighborhood friends, who start calling him “Private School.”
As one of the new kids at school, he has a guide, Liam, who is white, lives in a mansion, wears salmon shirts, is a third-generation RAD student—the auditorium isnamed after his family, and constantly says, “Just don’t judge me.” As Jordan becomes friends with Liam and some of the other kids, he realizes that everyone—teachers and students alike—judges each other, expecting them to fit stereotypes—Alexandra, the Weird Girl; Ashley, the Gossip Girl; Drew, the Troublemaker; Andy, the Bully; Ramon, the Mexican (who is actually Nicaraguan). Even Jordan feels his art teacher is not a real artist because she paints abstract art until she explains “I choose to do it to free up my creativity…to break boundaries. (222)
Jordan is shocked when Liam admits, “I just don’t feel like there’s anyone who’s like me at this school. I always feel so different.” And then continues, “Well, it’s better now. You and Drew are regular people.” (151) As the school year ends, Jordan admits to his parents, “You know, I feel kinda like a new kid.” (245)
A graphic novel that will appeal to readers grades 5-9, the drawings add nuance to the story. And the reader gains another entry into Jordan’s life and thoughts through his black/white sketch book.
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Jordan leaves his neighborhood each day to attend seventh grade at Riverdale Academy Day School (although he would rather go to an art school) which is not as diverse as he would like and he is not sure he will fit in. In fact he is beginning to not fit in with his neighborhood friends, who start calling him “Private School.”
As one of the new kids at school, he has a guide, Liam, who is white, lives in a mansion, wears salmon shirts, is a third-generation RAD student—the auditorium isnamed after his family, and constantly says, “Just don’t judge me.” As Jordan becomes friends with Liam and some of the other kids, he realizes that everyone—teachers and students alike—judges each other, expecting them to fit stereotypes—Alexandra, the Weird Girl; Ashley, the Gossip Girl; Drew, the Troublemaker; Andy, the Bully; Ramon, the Mexican (who is actually Nicaraguan). Even Jordan feels his art teacher is not a real artist because she paints abstract art until she explains “I choose to do it to free up my creativity…to break boundaries. (222)
Jordan is shocked when Liam admits, “I just don’t feel like there’s anyone who’s like me at this school. I always feel so different.” And then continues, “Well, it’s better now. You and Drew are regular people.” (151) As the school year ends, Jordan admits to his parents, “You know, I feel kinda like a new kid.” (245)
A graphic novel that will appeal to readers grades 5-9, the drawings add nuance to the story. And the reader gains another entry into Jordan’s life and thoughts through his black/white sketch book.
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Born Behind Bars by Padma Venkatraman
Kabir Khan, the son of a Muslim father and Hindu mother, was born behind bars in a prison in Chennai, his mother wrongly accused of a theft before he was born. He has lived his life in deplorable conditions—little food, no privacy, intermittent water availability, and no freedom. His only happiness is being with his Amma and his teacher at the prison school.
But at age 9 his life becomes even more uncertain when, too old to live in prison, he is to be released into the streets. “I tell myself I’m free. I’m outside where I dreamed of going, but I feel like a fish in a net being lifted out of the water I’ve lived in all my life.”(59)
Claimed by a man who says he is his uncle, he faces his first dangerous situation. “My ‘uncle’ is selling me.” (72)
Kabir escapes and navigates the streets with the help of a new friend, the resilient Rana, an adolescent girl who has lived on the streets —and in the trees— and killing her own food—squirrel and crow stews—since her Kurava (Roma) family was attacked, her father killed. She teaches Kabir how to survive street life. He has two goals: to find his father and find a lawyer to release his mother from prison. “I can just imagine Amma walking out of that gray building—me holding one of her hands and my father holding the other.” (93) His command of both Kannada and Tamil languages are an asset and when following his Amma’s wishes to be good, he returns a lady’s lost earring, he and Rana and rewarded with tickets to Bengaluru to find his father’s parents.
In Bengaluru Kabir and Rana learn to trust and find new lives that allow them to both have hope again.
Filled with memorable characters, this emotional story will bring empathy and cultural awareness to upper elementary/middle-grade readers; its short chapters will provide a good read-aloud for teachers, librarians, and parents.
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Kabir Khan, the son of a Muslim father and Hindu mother, was born behind bars in a prison in Chennai, his mother wrongly accused of a theft before he was born. He has lived his life in deplorable conditions—little food, no privacy, intermittent water availability, and no freedom. His only happiness is being with his Amma and his teacher at the prison school.
But at age 9 his life becomes even more uncertain when, too old to live in prison, he is to be released into the streets. “I tell myself I’m free. I’m outside where I dreamed of going, but I feel like a fish in a net being lifted out of the water I’ve lived in all my life.”(59)
Claimed by a man who says he is his uncle, he faces his first dangerous situation. “My ‘uncle’ is selling me.” (72)
Kabir escapes and navigates the streets with the help of a new friend, the resilient Rana, an adolescent girl who has lived on the streets —and in the trees— and killing her own food—squirrel and crow stews—since her Kurava (Roma) family was attacked, her father killed. She teaches Kabir how to survive street life. He has two goals: to find his father and find a lawyer to release his mother from prison. “I can just imagine Amma walking out of that gray building—me holding one of her hands and my father holding the other.” (93) His command of both Kannada and Tamil languages are an asset and when following his Amma’s wishes to be good, he returns a lady’s lost earring, he and Rana and rewarded with tickets to Bengaluru to find his father’s parents.
In Bengaluru Kabir and Rana learn to trust and find new lives that allow them to both have hope again.
Filled with memorable characters, this emotional story will bring empathy and cultural awareness to upper elementary/middle-grade readers; its short chapters will provide a good read-aloud for teachers, librarians, and parents.
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The Order of Things by Kaija Langley
Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda
said something, told somebody,
if I hadn’t made that stupid promise. (139)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 2,000 young, seemingly healthy people under age 25 in the United States die each year of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). (Author’s Note)
Eleven-year-olds April and Zander Jr (Zee) are best friends and fellow music lovers. Zee plays the violin and has just transferred to a school which can take his playing to the next level. April yearns to become a drummer but is just beginning lessons with Zee’s father.
April lives with her single mom (“single by choice”) and Zee lives with his postman father, a former musician.
Zee’s mom was a woman with
music in her bones who went
searching for a melody, a song
only she could hear, and never
returned. (94)
When Zee works day and night, hoping for the solo in the school concert, he faints and confides in April that his heart sometimes races but makes her promise not to tell anyone, a promise that April takes seriously. When he experiences SCA and dies April is tormented by guilt.
In her grief April is struggling with the idea that her mother has a serious girlfriend and that Mr. Zee is not handling his son’s death—April finds undelivered mail in his closet which she then takes upon herself to deliver.
When doing so, she finds out why her classmate, and possibly new friend, Asa misses so much school and is always hungry. After experiencing the dire consequences of keeping Zee’s secret, she knows that this is not a secret she should keep.
I only know that I didn’t let what
I knew go unspoken.
Not this time. (257)
Written in verse, Kaija Langley’s new novel will provide a map to help preteens—and teens—navigate the hard decisions in life.
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Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda
said something, told somebody,
if I hadn’t made that stupid promise. (139)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 2,000 young, seemingly healthy people under age 25 in the United States die each year of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). (Author’s Note)
Eleven-year-olds April and Zander Jr (Zee) are best friends and fellow music lovers. Zee plays the violin and has just transferred to a school which can take his playing to the next level. April yearns to become a drummer but is just beginning lessons with Zee’s father.
April lives with her single mom (“single by choice”) and Zee lives with his postman father, a former musician.
Zee’s mom was a woman with
music in her bones who went
searching for a melody, a song
only she could hear, and never
returned. (94)
When Zee works day and night, hoping for the solo in the school concert, he faints and confides in April that his heart sometimes races but makes her promise not to tell anyone, a promise that April takes seriously. When he experiences SCA and dies April is tormented by guilt.
In her grief April is struggling with the idea that her mother has a serious girlfriend and that Mr. Zee is not handling his son’s death—April finds undelivered mail in his closet which she then takes upon herself to deliver.
When doing so, she finds out why her classmate, and possibly new friend, Asa misses so much school and is always hungry. After experiencing the dire consequences of keeping Zee’s secret, she knows that this is not a secret she should keep.
I only know that I didn’t let what
I knew go unspoken.
Not this time. (257)
Written in verse, Kaija Langley’s new novel will provide a map to help preteens—and teens—navigate the hard decisions in life.
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Every Shiny Thing by Cordelia Jensen and Laurie Morrison
Readers follow the journey of two new friends from different types of lives as they discover themselves and how they can navigate their lives.
Lauren is a wealthy teen who goes to a Quaker school. She is very close to her brother Ryan but when he is sent to a boarding school for teens on the autism spectrum, Lauren is sure that he isn’t happy, that the school is not meeting his needs, and that her parents sent him away. She then realizes that all teens who need it can’t afford the help Ryan is getting and she designs a scheme to raise money, selling the “shiny things” that she feels her affluent family and friends don’t really need. Her scheme spirals out of control as she begins stealing items from stores, family, and friends, selling them on line, and the thrill of stealing takes over. She even involves her new friend Sierra.
Sierra’s father, a drug addict, is in jail; her mother, an alcoholic, who Sierra has cared for for years in a life of poverty, is also in jail. What she wants is her family; what she needs is a stable loving family—and a friend, but not a friend who gets her involved with her own addiction.
Sierra moves in next door to Lauren with her foster parents Carl and Anne, an interracial Quaker couple who are surviving the trauma of losing their own child. She pushes them away, anxious to get back to her old life, but “In the end, he [Carl] had me find the proof/ before the statement./ A new way to think.” (p 235) Sierra and Lauren’s friendship guides them in finding a new way of thinking. Sierra realizes she can love her mother but she can’t help her, and she can let Carl and Anne help her. “I know I can’t be your mom, Sierra,/ but I can be your Anne.” (p. 333) Lauren realizes that she can stop worrying about Ryan who is happy in his new environment and she can’t save the world, but “I do know this: I’m not going to forget about Hailey or zone out when I walk past someone asking for money on the street. I won’t. Because someday, maybe, I’ll be able to do something more.” (p. 353)
Lauren’s and Sierra’s narrations are written by each of the authors in their own unique style—Lauren’s narratives in prose and Sierra’s in free verse, styles which fit their lives and personalities. Their lives are populated by culturally diverse friends and their families as they traverse the Philadelphia I know so well.
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Readers follow the journey of two new friends from different types of lives as they discover themselves and how they can navigate their lives.
Lauren is a wealthy teen who goes to a Quaker school. She is very close to her brother Ryan but when he is sent to a boarding school for teens on the autism spectrum, Lauren is sure that he isn’t happy, that the school is not meeting his needs, and that her parents sent him away. She then realizes that all teens who need it can’t afford the help Ryan is getting and she designs a scheme to raise money, selling the “shiny things” that she feels her affluent family and friends don’t really need. Her scheme spirals out of control as she begins stealing items from stores, family, and friends, selling them on line, and the thrill of stealing takes over. She even involves her new friend Sierra.
Sierra’s father, a drug addict, is in jail; her mother, an alcoholic, who Sierra has cared for for years in a life of poverty, is also in jail. What she wants is her family; what she needs is a stable loving family—and a friend, but not a friend who gets her involved with her own addiction.
Sierra moves in next door to Lauren with her foster parents Carl and Anne, an interracial Quaker couple who are surviving the trauma of losing their own child. She pushes them away, anxious to get back to her old life, but “In the end, he [Carl] had me find the proof/ before the statement./ A new way to think.” (p 235) Sierra and Lauren’s friendship guides them in finding a new way of thinking. Sierra realizes she can love her mother but she can’t help her, and she can let Carl and Anne help her. “I know I can’t be your mom, Sierra,/ but I can be your Anne.” (p. 333) Lauren realizes that she can stop worrying about Ryan who is happy in his new environment and she can’t save the world, but “I do know this: I’m not going to forget about Hailey or zone out when I walk past someone asking for money on the street. I won’t. Because someday, maybe, I’ll be able to do something more.” (p. 353)
Lauren’s and Sierra’s narrations are written by each of the authors in their own unique style—Lauren’s narratives in prose and Sierra’s in free verse, styles which fit their lives and personalities. Their lives are populated by culturally diverse friends and their families as they traverse the Philadelphia I know so well.
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Zara’s Rules for Record-Breaking Fun by Hena Khan
“I have to come up with a plan to make sure I stay Queen of the Neighborhood. And fast.” (30)
Ten-and-three-quarters-year-old Zara lives with her Muslim family—Mama, Baba, little brother Zayd, Naano and Nana Abu. Zara has always organized the kids of her neighborhood: she makes rules—which are fair; she chooses the games—which are fun; and she picks the teams—which are even, there being three boys and three girls. In fact Mr. Chapman, their older neighbor, nicknamed Zara “the Queen of the Neighborhood.” But then Mr. Chapman sells his house and Zara worries about who will move in. Will there be kids? Will they throw off the dynamics of the neighborhood? Will there be an in even number for teams?
A Jewish family with two children moves in: Naomi Goldstein, a ten year old girl, and Michael, her older brother. Naomi has a lot of good ideas, like making “a cool tub” (like a hot tub) from a blow-up swimming pool and building a clubhouse. And she includes everyone. But when the others join Naomi, Zara refuses, feeling that her position as Queen of the Neighborhood has been threatened. Her uncle gives her some of his old books and one is the Guinness World Records. Zara decides to break a record so she can enter the Hall of Fame and “seal [her] place” in the neighborhood.
Zara’s plan fails when Zayd bikes into her Hula Hooping marathon and rain ruins her longest chalk drawing and she finds out that Guinness World Records has its own rules. Meanwhile Naomi starts getting everyone involved in breaking records, saying that Zara inspired her. “I thought it would be cool if we all broke records. Then we can be in the book together.” 85)
It takes a while for Zara to realize that Naomi is not competing with her, her friends are not intentionally bailing on her just because Naomi has some fun ideas too, and that everyone can have fun together and take turns making the plans. “And just like that, I realize I’m sharing the crown. But, surprisingly, it makes me feel a lot lighter than I expected.” (98)
This short book shares an important lesson about friendship, community and working together.
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“I have to come up with a plan to make sure I stay Queen of the Neighborhood. And fast.” (30)
Ten-and-three-quarters-year-old Zara lives with her Muslim family—Mama, Baba, little brother Zayd, Naano and Nana Abu. Zara has always organized the kids of her neighborhood: she makes rules—which are fair; she chooses the games—which are fun; and she picks the teams—which are even, there being three boys and three girls. In fact Mr. Chapman, their older neighbor, nicknamed Zara “the Queen of the Neighborhood.” But then Mr. Chapman sells his house and Zara worries about who will move in. Will there be kids? Will they throw off the dynamics of the neighborhood? Will there be an in even number for teams?
A Jewish family with two children moves in: Naomi Goldstein, a ten year old girl, and Michael, her older brother. Naomi has a lot of good ideas, like making “a cool tub” (like a hot tub) from a blow-up swimming pool and building a clubhouse. And she includes everyone. But when the others join Naomi, Zara refuses, feeling that her position as Queen of the Neighborhood has been threatened. Her uncle gives her some of his old books and one is the Guinness World Records. Zara decides to break a record so she can enter the Hall of Fame and “seal [her] place” in the neighborhood.
Zara’s plan fails when Zayd bikes into her Hula Hooping marathon and rain ruins her longest chalk drawing and she finds out that Guinness World Records has its own rules. Meanwhile Naomi starts getting everyone involved in breaking records, saying that Zara inspired her. “I thought it would be cool if we all broke records. Then we can be in the book together.” 85)
It takes a while for Zara to realize that Naomi is not competing with her, her friends are not intentionally bailing on her just because Naomi has some fun ideas too, and that everyone can have fun together and take turns making the plans. “And just like that, I realize I’m sharing the crown. But, surprisingly, it makes me feel a lot lighter than I expected.” (98)
This short book shares an important lesson about friendship, community and working together.
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All of Me by Chris Baron
Seventh grader Ari Rosensweig is fat, “so big that everyone stares.” (1) He is made fun of, bullied, called names. One time he is beat up, not even trying to defend himself. But he does make one friend, Pick, the only one who tries to learn the real Ari.
His parents fight. His mother is an artist, and the family moves frequently, his dad managing his mother’s art business. But when they move to the beach for the summer, Ari’s dad leaves and sees Ari infrequently.
There are times when you feel
like you can’t stop eating,
because eating
is the only way
you know
how to
feel
right
again. (67-68)
But that summer Ari makes two new friends. And as he has let the haters make him into who he is, he now allows Pick, Lisa, and Jorge help him “to find the real me.” (145) He also receives the support of the rabbi who is training him for his Bar Mitzvah, his conversion to manhood under Jewish law. “’Maybe,’ the rabbi says, ‘it’s as simple as believing that you don’t have to be what others want you to be.’” (225)
His mother suggests a diet, but it seems to be a healthy diet and he sheds pounds.
This doesn’t look like me.
It can’t be me.
I don’t look like this,
normal. (209)
On a camping trip with Jorge, Ari discards the diet book.
I don’t see a fat kid,
not anymore.
I simply
see
myself. (267)
Finally, even though he has gained back some of the pounds (7 of them), he no longer feels like a failure because "it’s not about the weight”; it is about what the summer has brought: adventures, stories, and real friends.
Just me moving forward,
finding my own way. (311)
Told in lyrical free verse, this is a story that is needed by so many kids. This is not a book about weight; it is the story of identity and friendships—and power over what you can control.
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Seventh grader Ari Rosensweig is fat, “so big that everyone stares.” (1) He is made fun of, bullied, called names. One time he is beat up, not even trying to defend himself. But he does make one friend, Pick, the only one who tries to learn the real Ari.
His parents fight. His mother is an artist, and the family moves frequently, his dad managing his mother’s art business. But when they move to the beach for the summer, Ari’s dad leaves and sees Ari infrequently.
There are times when you feel
like you can’t stop eating,
because eating
is the only way
you know
how to
feel
right
again. (67-68)
But that summer Ari makes two new friends. And as he has let the haters make him into who he is, he now allows Pick, Lisa, and Jorge help him “to find the real me.” (145) He also receives the support of the rabbi who is training him for his Bar Mitzvah, his conversion to manhood under Jewish law. “’Maybe,’ the rabbi says, ‘it’s as simple as believing that you don’t have to be what others want you to be.’” (225)
His mother suggests a diet, but it seems to be a healthy diet and he sheds pounds.
This doesn’t look like me.
It can’t be me.
I don’t look like this,
normal. (209)
On a camping trip with Jorge, Ari discards the diet book.
I don’t see a fat kid,
not anymore.
I simply
see
myself. (267)
Finally, even though he has gained back some of the pounds (7 of them), he no longer feels like a failure because "it’s not about the weight”; it is about what the summer has brought: adventures, stories, and real friends.
Just me moving forward,
finding my own way. (311)
Told in lyrical free verse, this is a story that is needed by so many kids. This is not a book about weight; it is the story of identity and friendships—and power over what you can control.
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The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart
You see, I’d walked into that gas station alone. And I’d walked out of it alone. Just like I’d walked in and out of gas stations alone every day for, like, years. And maybe right then and there, holding that kitten, is when I’d just had enough of all that aloneness. (7)
Coyote Sunrise and her dad Rodeo have been living in a school bus and driving around the country for five years. Five years since Coyote’s two sisters and her mother died in a car crash. Five years since they had spoken of their family, visited their hometown, seen Coyote’s grandmother, or even used their real names.
But one day at a campground, spending the day with a new friend and her mother, Coyote noticed, “It felt like a family. Like a sister and a mom. I liked it. I wouldn’t have been willing to admit right then that it felt like that, or that I liked it—but it did, and I did.” (44) But after that one day, as was their custom, Rodeo and Coyote get back in the bus to move on and share once-upon-a-time stories.
“Once upon a time, there were three girls. Sisters. Once upon a time, there was a mom.
And, once upon a time there was a box.… And they’d all promised, all three sisters and one mom had promised to come back for the box of memories…no matter what, they’d come back for that box.” (56)
In a weekly phone conversation with her grandmother, Coyote learns that the park where she, her sisters, and mother buried a memory box will be bulldozed for development, and she makes a decision. “I had to get myself, and a bus, and my dad, all the way across the country in less than four days. And I had to do it without my dad noticing.” (62)
Along the way they pick up a cast of characters, diverse people with their own problems: Lester is returning to a woman who wants him to give up his passion for music; Salvador and his mother are fleeing an abusive father/husband; and Val is running away from parents who refuse to accept her as she is—and of course, Ivan, the cat. Traveling with these people, becoming friends, and helping them solve their problems, Coyote finds the support and family she needs to give her the strength to do what she needs to do to help her father acknowledge and move on from his loss and to help her fulfill her promise to her sisters and mother.
“I guess sometimes life does seem like too much, especially during the big moments. But usually you can dig inside yourself and find what you need. You can find what you need to grow into those big moments and make ‘em yours.” (299)
Dan Gemeinhart’s novel allows us to join this family, as if we were riding along, and share their sorrows, their failures, and their successes as we witness Coyote’s and her father’s healing.
-----
You see, I’d walked into that gas station alone. And I’d walked out of it alone. Just like I’d walked in and out of gas stations alone every day for, like, years. And maybe right then and there, holding that kitten, is when I’d just had enough of all that aloneness. (7)
Coyote Sunrise and her dad Rodeo have been living in a school bus and driving around the country for five years. Five years since Coyote’s two sisters and her mother died in a car crash. Five years since they had spoken of their family, visited their hometown, seen Coyote’s grandmother, or even used their real names.
But one day at a campground, spending the day with a new friend and her mother, Coyote noticed, “It felt like a family. Like a sister and a mom. I liked it. I wouldn’t have been willing to admit right then that it felt like that, or that I liked it—but it did, and I did.” (44) But after that one day, as was their custom, Rodeo and Coyote get back in the bus to move on and share once-upon-a-time stories.
“Once upon a time, there were three girls. Sisters. Once upon a time, there was a mom.
And, once upon a time there was a box.… And they’d all promised, all three sisters and one mom had promised to come back for the box of memories…no matter what, they’d come back for that box.” (56)
In a weekly phone conversation with her grandmother, Coyote learns that the park where she, her sisters, and mother buried a memory box will be bulldozed for development, and she makes a decision. “I had to get myself, and a bus, and my dad, all the way across the country in less than four days. And I had to do it without my dad noticing.” (62)
Along the way they pick up a cast of characters, diverse people with their own problems: Lester is returning to a woman who wants him to give up his passion for music; Salvador and his mother are fleeing an abusive father/husband; and Val is running away from parents who refuse to accept her as she is—and of course, Ivan, the cat. Traveling with these people, becoming friends, and helping them solve their problems, Coyote finds the support and family she needs to give her the strength to do what she needs to do to help her father acknowledge and move on from his loss and to help her fulfill her promise to her sisters and mother.
“I guess sometimes life does seem like too much, especially during the big moments. But usually you can dig inside yourself and find what you need. You can find what you need to grow into those big moments and make ‘em yours.” (299)
Dan Gemeinhart’s novel allows us to join this family, as if we were riding along, and share their sorrows, their failures, and their successes as we witness Coyote’s and her father’s healing.
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Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson
In this novel, a group of six fifth/sixth grade special education students not only have classes together but their intuitive, empathetic teacher gives them the gift of an hour every Friday to go to another room on their own as a group, and talk with each other— the ARTT room (A Room To Talk). Over the year the six come to know each others’ stories, fears, and hopes—Esteban whose father was taken by Immigration officers; Ashton who, as the only white student in the school, is bullied; Tiago whose Puerto Rican mother becomes more quiet as she is ridiculed for speaking only Spanish; Amari who can no longer play with the toy guns he loves because, as a Black adolescent, it is not safe; Haley, the narrator whose father is in jail and mother died when she was three; and Holly, her best friend who struggles with ADHD and has to defend being “rich.”
Through their conversations and as they share more of themselves and their stories, this group becomes a family, a safe harbor for each other. “’Club Us,’ Amari said. ‘The membership requirements are kinda messed up, but whatever.’” (96) Meanwhile Haley is struggling with her father coming home from jail and her uncle, who has parented her since she was three, leaving. She reflects back on the year and what it meant to her story, “I didn’t know it would be people you barely knew becoming friends that harbored you. And dreams you didn’t even know you had—coming true. I didn’t know it would be superpowers rising up out of tragedies, and perfect moments in a nearly empty classroom.” (175)
The shifting timeline might be difficult for some readers, and they may want to keep a timeline of the events in the novel, but they will come to care for the characters and perhaps, in this story, see themselves (a Mirror) or their peers (a Window).
-----
In this novel, a group of six fifth/sixth grade special education students not only have classes together but their intuitive, empathetic teacher gives them the gift of an hour every Friday to go to another room on their own as a group, and talk with each other— the ARTT room (A Room To Talk). Over the year the six come to know each others’ stories, fears, and hopes—Esteban whose father was taken by Immigration officers; Ashton who, as the only white student in the school, is bullied; Tiago whose Puerto Rican mother becomes more quiet as she is ridiculed for speaking only Spanish; Amari who can no longer play with the toy guns he loves because, as a Black adolescent, it is not safe; Haley, the narrator whose father is in jail and mother died when she was three; and Holly, her best friend who struggles with ADHD and has to defend being “rich.”
Through their conversations and as they share more of themselves and their stories, this group becomes a family, a safe harbor for each other. “’Club Us,’ Amari said. ‘The membership requirements are kinda messed up, but whatever.’” (96) Meanwhile Haley is struggling with her father coming home from jail and her uncle, who has parented her since she was three, leaving. She reflects back on the year and what it meant to her story, “I didn’t know it would be people you barely knew becoming friends that harbored you. And dreams you didn’t even know you had—coming true. I didn’t know it would be superpowers rising up out of tragedies, and perfect moments in a nearly empty classroom.” (175)
The shifting timeline might be difficult for some readers, and they may want to keep a timeline of the events in the novel, but they will come to care for the characters and perhaps, in this story, see themselves (a Mirror) or their peers (a Window).
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Consider the Octopus by Gae Polisner and Nora Raleigh Baskin
“Consider the octopus, dude, duh,” I say out loud to myself because sometimes it helps to talk to someone. “That part is the important part. The octopus.” (88)
And the pink octopus avatar starts the chain of events which lead 12-year-old Sydney Miller (not marine biologist Dr. Sydney Miller of the Monterey Bay Aquarium) and her goldfish Rachel Carson to Oceana II, a ship researching the Great PGP.
When seventh-grader Jeremy JB Barnes, under the custody of his recently-divorced mother, chief scientist of the Oceana II, finds himself accompanying her on her mission “to sweep and vacuum up approximately eighty-eight thousand tons of garbage” called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, he was less than enthusiastic. “I like the ocean plenty from the beach.”
Until the high school SEAmester students arrive, he is the only adolescent on board. But tasked with the job of inviting well-known scientists to the join them, JB inadvertently sends the invitation to the wrong Sydney Miller who jumps at the chance, looking for something to do this summer now that her best and only friend has moved away. Sydney and her grandmother agree, “It’s synchronicity” (91), the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection. “What psychologist Carl Jung called ‘meaningful coincidences’…” (228) However, “These signs we see all the time, the universe, these coincidences that we give meaning? They only work if we want them to…” (12)
And Sydney and Jeremy want these signs to work. Hiding Sydney on the ship, sometimes in plain sight with the help of two of the SEAmster girls, Sydney and JB hatch a plan to bring about the publicity the mission needs to retains its grant. “Maybe we’re here because we’re supposed to be here. Maybe the two of us are supposed to do something really important.” (144)
When you put two of my favorite authors together, what do readers get? A fun, important adventure with engaging characters who present two voices, representing two perspectives, and who show that, according to news reporter Damian Jacks, “Mark my words: kids and our youth. That’s who’s going to really help change things..… Kids, not adults, are the future of our planet.” (171)
And there is a lot of science and information about the polluting of the oceans. “It’s amazing how many people still don’t know how much waste—garbage,” she corrects herself, “is floating in the middle of the Pacific.” (226)
Readers learn about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and its importance to our environment. Besides the garbage that is killing sea life—birds and fish, this affects all of us.
“Because every drop of water we have, all of it, circles around, evaporates into the sky, and comes back down as rain, or mist, or snow. It sinks into the ground and fills rivers, ponds, lakes, reservoirs, and the well in my backyard.
Water I shower with. Cook with.
And drink.
No new water is ever made.
This is all we’ve got.” (167)
An important read, this novel could be included in an environmental impacts study in ELA or science classes, leading to more research on the topic.
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“Consider the octopus, dude, duh,” I say out loud to myself because sometimes it helps to talk to someone. “That part is the important part. The octopus.” (88)
And the pink octopus avatar starts the chain of events which lead 12-year-old Sydney Miller (not marine biologist Dr. Sydney Miller of the Monterey Bay Aquarium) and her goldfish Rachel Carson to Oceana II, a ship researching the Great PGP.
When seventh-grader Jeremy JB Barnes, under the custody of his recently-divorced mother, chief scientist of the Oceana II, finds himself accompanying her on her mission “to sweep and vacuum up approximately eighty-eight thousand tons of garbage” called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, he was less than enthusiastic. “I like the ocean plenty from the beach.”
Until the high school SEAmester students arrive, he is the only adolescent on board. But tasked with the job of inviting well-known scientists to the join them, JB inadvertently sends the invitation to the wrong Sydney Miller who jumps at the chance, looking for something to do this summer now that her best and only friend has moved away. Sydney and her grandmother agree, “It’s synchronicity” (91), the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection. “What psychologist Carl Jung called ‘meaningful coincidences’…” (228) However, “These signs we see all the time, the universe, these coincidences that we give meaning? They only work if we want them to…” (12)
And Sydney and Jeremy want these signs to work. Hiding Sydney on the ship, sometimes in plain sight with the help of two of the SEAmster girls, Sydney and JB hatch a plan to bring about the publicity the mission needs to retains its grant. “Maybe we’re here because we’re supposed to be here. Maybe the two of us are supposed to do something really important.” (144)
When you put two of my favorite authors together, what do readers get? A fun, important adventure with engaging characters who present two voices, representing two perspectives, and who show that, according to news reporter Damian Jacks, “Mark my words: kids and our youth. That’s who’s going to really help change things..… Kids, not adults, are the future of our planet.” (171)
And there is a lot of science and information about the polluting of the oceans. “It’s amazing how many people still don’t know how much waste—garbage,” she corrects herself, “is floating in the middle of the Pacific.” (226)
Readers learn about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and its importance to our environment. Besides the garbage that is killing sea life—birds and fish, this affects all of us.
“Because every drop of water we have, all of it, circles around, evaporates into the sky, and comes back down as rain, or mist, or snow. It sinks into the ground and fills rivers, ponds, lakes, reservoirs, and the well in my backyard.
Water I shower with. Cook with.
And drink.
No new water is ever made.
This is all we’ve got.” (167)
An important read, this novel could be included in an environmental impacts study in ELA or science classes, leading to more research on the topic.
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Anybody Here Seen Frenchie? by Leslie Connor
“You’re having a new kind of year.” Mr. Menkis says it for me. ”Treat yourself sweetly, Aurora. Change happens. It’s the world’s number one constant.” (66)
Sixth-grader Aurora Petrequin has known Frenchie Livernois since the beginning of third grade when he and his mother rented their next-door house. The best friends are inseparable and opposite. Frenchie has autism and doesn’t speak—at all; Aurora is loud and talks impulsively—all the time. Together they explore nature—Frenchie obsessed with birds, Auruora with rocks, especially finding a tourmaline, a mineral produced in areas of her native Maine.
Aurora has no trouble understanding Frenchie and interpreting his body language, and one goal she has is to help others see him. When Sheree of Troviosity gifts Frenchie with an expensive Audubon print of a nuthatch for his bird print collection, Aurora says, “Thanks for seeing him.” (99)
But then sixth grade arrives, and for the first time Frenchie is in a different class and has a new aide, Mr. Menkis. Aurora panics, “Mom! Pop! Gracia! There’s a mess-up of all mess-ups here! Frenchie and I got put in different classes.” (3) And another change is that two new students move to her school and class and, for the first time, besides Frenchie, Aurora has friends.
When Frenchie disappears one day, Aurora panics and feels guilty for not walking him to his room that morning. While they search for Frenchie, Aurora examines everything she knows about him. As she tells Joanie and Leena, “Frenchie doesn’t get lost.… He gets me unlost. Like a human compass.” (86)
But one day turns into two. “I’m thinking about Frenchie. Best Days. Like, when Cedar came home. And family dinners and pancake Sundays. Bird hounding and rock hounding, and me cheering Frenchie on the day he learned to float. Him going along with me, the times we trailed the piebald deer. And him knowing the way home. Having a true friend—the thing I am aching for this morning. (265)
And this is truly a story about friendship. It is not about neurodiversity; it is not about nature (although nature is a catalyst and a bond between Frenchie and Aurora and between many of the townspeople), it is first and foremost about the power and symbiotic relationship of friendship like no novel I have every read.
As the town gathers and comes together to look for Frenchie, adding more and more people to the search, people who remember meeting Frenchie with Aurora, people begin to see Frenchie, “[Aurora’s] bird-loving, no-talk, very best friend.” (321)
A story told in multiple viewpoints for all upper elementary and middle school readers offering adventure, mystery, nature, characters of all ages from baby Cedar to adults who sometimes surprise us, and heart.
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“You’re having a new kind of year.” Mr. Menkis says it for me. ”Treat yourself sweetly, Aurora. Change happens. It’s the world’s number one constant.” (66)
Sixth-grader Aurora Petrequin has known Frenchie Livernois since the beginning of third grade when he and his mother rented their next-door house. The best friends are inseparable and opposite. Frenchie has autism and doesn’t speak—at all; Aurora is loud and talks impulsively—all the time. Together they explore nature—Frenchie obsessed with birds, Auruora with rocks, especially finding a tourmaline, a mineral produced in areas of her native Maine.
Aurora has no trouble understanding Frenchie and interpreting his body language, and one goal she has is to help others see him. When Sheree of Troviosity gifts Frenchie with an expensive Audubon print of a nuthatch for his bird print collection, Aurora says, “Thanks for seeing him.” (99)
But then sixth grade arrives, and for the first time Frenchie is in a different class and has a new aide, Mr. Menkis. Aurora panics, “Mom! Pop! Gracia! There’s a mess-up of all mess-ups here! Frenchie and I got put in different classes.” (3) And another change is that two new students move to her school and class and, for the first time, besides Frenchie, Aurora has friends.
When Frenchie disappears one day, Aurora panics and feels guilty for not walking him to his room that morning. While they search for Frenchie, Aurora examines everything she knows about him. As she tells Joanie and Leena, “Frenchie doesn’t get lost.… He gets me unlost. Like a human compass.” (86)
But one day turns into two. “I’m thinking about Frenchie. Best Days. Like, when Cedar came home. And family dinners and pancake Sundays. Bird hounding and rock hounding, and me cheering Frenchie on the day he learned to float. Him going along with me, the times we trailed the piebald deer. And him knowing the way home. Having a true friend—the thing I am aching for this morning. (265)
And this is truly a story about friendship. It is not about neurodiversity; it is not about nature (although nature is a catalyst and a bond between Frenchie and Aurora and between many of the townspeople), it is first and foremost about the power and symbiotic relationship of friendship like no novel I have every read.
As the town gathers and comes together to look for Frenchie, adding more and more people to the search, people who remember meeting Frenchie with Aurora, people begin to see Frenchie, “[Aurora’s] bird-loving, no-talk, very best friend.” (321)
A story told in multiple viewpoints for all upper elementary and middle school readers offering adventure, mystery, nature, characters of all ages from baby Cedar to adults who sometimes surprise us, and heart.
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Crashing in Love by Jennifer Richard Jacobson
During the week 12-year-old Peyton lives with her 13-year-old sister Calla and her 16-year old sister Bronwyn and their mother, and on the weekends the girls stay with their father and his mother across the bay.
Peyton tries to be perfect: she brushes her teeth for exactly two minutes; she brushes her hair exactly 100 times before bed; she makes her bed every morning; and she follows the quotes of successful people that covers her walls. And she even has a list for the ideal boyfriend—with 10, sometimes 11, items.
When Peyton’s best friend leaves for the summer, Peyton stumbles, literally, upon a boy in the middle of the road. Gray, a resident of the summer camp, was running down the road and was stuck by a hit and skip driver. When Peyton finds him, he is comatose. She calls 9-1-1, stays with him, and that begins her quests for the summer.
One quest is to spend time with Gray and find out if he is her perfect boyfriend. “It could be chance, but it doesn’t feel like it. Mom’s always saying that everything happens for a reason≥, and maybe she’s right. Maybe, as Mari says, Gray and I are destined to be together.” (32) She accomplishes this by securing a job from his mother to sit in his hospital room and talk to Gray for two hours a day. She will know for sure when he wakes up, but two weeks pass with him still in a coma.
The other quest is to find who committed this crime. Peyton’s search is helped by, while also being complicated by, the fact that her mother is a journalist for the local paper. As any good detective, Peyton trespasses, gets caught looking in garages, and follows lead after lead, sometimes sure where her search will take her, sometimes not; sometimes sure she knows who is guilty, sometimes not.
Payton may or may not find the driver, but two things she finds out are that (1) trying to be “perfect” makes her an annoying friend, and (2) people and circumstances aren’t always as you think they are. “The more I insist on things being the way they’re supposed to be, the more I’m prevented from seeing (and accepting) things the way they really are.” (240)
A little mystery, a girl who cares—maybe too much, and a family getting used to divorce.
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During the week 12-year-old Peyton lives with her 13-year-old sister Calla and her 16-year old sister Bronwyn and their mother, and on the weekends the girls stay with their father and his mother across the bay.
Peyton tries to be perfect: she brushes her teeth for exactly two minutes; she brushes her hair exactly 100 times before bed; she makes her bed every morning; and she follows the quotes of successful people that covers her walls. And she even has a list for the ideal boyfriend—with 10, sometimes 11, items.
When Peyton’s best friend leaves for the summer, Peyton stumbles, literally, upon a boy in the middle of the road. Gray, a resident of the summer camp, was running down the road and was stuck by a hit and skip driver. When Peyton finds him, he is comatose. She calls 9-1-1, stays with him, and that begins her quests for the summer.
One quest is to spend time with Gray and find out if he is her perfect boyfriend. “It could be chance, but it doesn’t feel like it. Mom’s always saying that everything happens for a reason≥, and maybe she’s right. Maybe, as Mari says, Gray and I are destined to be together.” (32) She accomplishes this by securing a job from his mother to sit in his hospital room and talk to Gray for two hours a day. She will know for sure when he wakes up, but two weeks pass with him still in a coma.
The other quest is to find who committed this crime. Peyton’s search is helped by, while also being complicated by, the fact that her mother is a journalist for the local paper. As any good detective, Peyton trespasses, gets caught looking in garages, and follows lead after lead, sometimes sure where her search will take her, sometimes not; sometimes sure she knows who is guilty, sometimes not.
Payton may or may not find the driver, but two things she finds out are that (1) trying to be “perfect” makes her an annoying friend, and (2) people and circumstances aren’t always as you think they are. “The more I insist on things being the way they’re supposed to be, the more I’m prevented from seeing (and accepting) things the way they really are.” (240)
A little mystery, a girl who cares—maybe too much, and a family getting used to divorce.
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Breakout by Kate Messner
It takes a village to build a town and maintain a town and its citizens, and Kate Messner, all by herself, is that village as she provides all the voices, drawings, and artifacts of a town.
Breakout is the story of Wolf Creek and three weeks in the life of its citizens: 7th grader Nora Tucker and her best friend Lizzie Bruno, Elidee Jones who moves to this almost-all-white town (except for one family) for the last two weeks of the school year, Nora’s brothers Sean and Owen, and a variety of family members, store employees, school personnel, church women, and the officers and inmates of the prison, one of which is Troy, Elidee’s brother.
As students finish school, write letters for the time capsule for the future citizens of Wolf Creek, and plan for Field Day, two prisoners escape, and for the next three weeks the life of the town is “different.” Police and reporters invade the town; fear is in control, Nora, as a time capsule reporter, notices that life is more complex—or maybe she is becoming aware of the complexities. For example Nora notices that there has always been a sign to leave backpacks behind the counter at Mountain Market, but it isn’t enforced until Elidee enters the store. She also learns the power of civil disobedience but also that there is a price to pay. As she states in a June 12 letter, “But I guess you can get used to almost anything.” (190)
Nora writes at the end of the summer, “…sometimes you need to hear a lots of points of view to get the whole story.” (1). And that’s what author Messner provides—lots of points of view. And that is what amazes me most about this delightful novel. I am floored at how the author writes in the voices of all these difference characters. Now you might be thinking, “But all authors write all their character’s voices,” but this novel stands above. It is multi-genre, and there are letters, recorded conversations, text messages, news articles, the school’s morning announcements, and student petitions. And they all are so realistic; it is difficult to believe that one person crafted all.
Stretching her genius even farther, as character Lizzie, Messner writes hilarious parodies of the news, such as the “Frankfurter Face-Off,” the town’s council’s debate on the type of hot dogs to be served at the July 4 Cookout. Owen draws cartoons of his evil plots and plans to capture the escaped inmates, and we see the signs that are posted on the market and the church. The most astounding is Elidee who begins writing poems inspired by her favorite poets: Nikki Giovanni, Nikki Grimes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Paul Laurence, Jacqueline Woodson, and finally Lin-Manuel Miranda’s lyrics of Hamilton, my favorite being the student council vice president’s rap battle with the principal, based on “Cabinet Battle #1.”
Even though I laughed harder than I have for a long time and plastered my ARC with sticky notes for places I wanted to read over and share, there were lessons to be learned: Elidee finds her voice, Lizzie learns about forgiveness; and Nora learns about the complications of life, that “even good guys do bad things sometimes. And I think people who do bad things—no matter how bad—have to be more than the awful things they did.” (127)
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It takes a village to build a town and maintain a town and its citizens, and Kate Messner, all by herself, is that village as she provides all the voices, drawings, and artifacts of a town.
Breakout is the story of Wolf Creek and three weeks in the life of its citizens: 7th grader Nora Tucker and her best friend Lizzie Bruno, Elidee Jones who moves to this almost-all-white town (except for one family) for the last two weeks of the school year, Nora’s brothers Sean and Owen, and a variety of family members, store employees, school personnel, church women, and the officers and inmates of the prison, one of which is Troy, Elidee’s brother.
As students finish school, write letters for the time capsule for the future citizens of Wolf Creek, and plan for Field Day, two prisoners escape, and for the next three weeks the life of the town is “different.” Police and reporters invade the town; fear is in control, Nora, as a time capsule reporter, notices that life is more complex—or maybe she is becoming aware of the complexities. For example Nora notices that there has always been a sign to leave backpacks behind the counter at Mountain Market, but it isn’t enforced until Elidee enters the store. She also learns the power of civil disobedience but also that there is a price to pay. As she states in a June 12 letter, “But I guess you can get used to almost anything.” (190)
Nora writes at the end of the summer, “…sometimes you need to hear a lots of points of view to get the whole story.” (1). And that’s what author Messner provides—lots of points of view. And that is what amazes me most about this delightful novel. I am floored at how the author writes in the voices of all these difference characters. Now you might be thinking, “But all authors write all their character’s voices,” but this novel stands above. It is multi-genre, and there are letters, recorded conversations, text messages, news articles, the school’s morning announcements, and student petitions. And they all are so realistic; it is difficult to believe that one person crafted all.
Stretching her genius even farther, as character Lizzie, Messner writes hilarious parodies of the news, such as the “Frankfurter Face-Off,” the town’s council’s debate on the type of hot dogs to be served at the July 4 Cookout. Owen draws cartoons of his evil plots and plans to capture the escaped inmates, and we see the signs that are posted on the market and the church. The most astounding is Elidee who begins writing poems inspired by her favorite poets: Nikki Giovanni, Nikki Grimes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Paul Laurence, Jacqueline Woodson, and finally Lin-Manuel Miranda’s lyrics of Hamilton, my favorite being the student council vice president’s rap battle with the principal, based on “Cabinet Battle #1.”
Even though I laughed harder than I have for a long time and plastered my ARC with sticky notes for places I wanted to read over and share, there were lessons to be learned: Elidee finds her voice, Lizzie learns about forgiveness; and Nora learns about the complications of life, that “even good guys do bad things sometimes. And I think people who do bad things—no matter how bad—have to be more than the awful things they did.” (127)
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Mixed-Up by Gordon Korman
“Some things that happen are so big you’re never the same afterward.” (39)
Seventh grader Reef Moody is grieving the death of his mother a year ago. He has set himself off from his friends, especially Portia, the girl he likes. He is convinced that he contracted Covid from Portia at her party—a party he begged his mother to let him attend—and passed it to his mother who died a few weeks later, and he is riddled with guilt. He was taken in by his mother’s best friend, but her teen children are not happy with the situation, especially Declan who bullies Reef continually and even gets him into trouble with the school principal.
And strangely, Reef’s memories of his mother are growing dim; he can hardly remember her face and he doesn’t know why. But he does have vivid memories from a life that he knows is not his, a life with a yard and a garden and a rabbit named Jaws. And a few times he has executed karate moves.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town lives Theo Metzinger, a seventh grader who takes karate and grows vegetable and fights with his nemesis, a rabbit named Jaws. Theo is much of a loner to the disappointment of his father, who, as an adolescent, “ruled the school.” And lately Theo is having memories of a lady and feeling an unbearable sadness. When Theo, at his school, begins seeing a different school—different tiles, different walls, a different walkway, and a cupola, he begins investigating and locates Delgado Middle School on the other side of town where he meets Portia and eventually Reef. “At last [Theo] begins, ‘There are things I remember that I know for a fact never happened to me.’ ‘Me too!’ [Reef] jumps in breathlessly.” (94)
Reef is not happy to meet Theo who he feels is stealing his life, at least his past. “It hits me: If Theo has access to my memories. How can he remember what I can’t. The answer is so obvious: He’s not sharing my memories; he’s stealing them.” (97-98) But as the two boys lose more and more memories and have to rely on each other more and more, they realize they need to solve the mystery. Theo realizes that Reef has a lot to lose—his life with his mother. Discovering that they were born on the same day in the same hospital, they research the possible cause of this strange phenomenon and plan a dangerous experiment to reverse it, aided by, strangely enough, Declan.
Told in alternating narratives, this is a story of friendship, family, and the importance of memories. “Memory: the mental process of registering, storing, and retrieving information.” (102), but so much more.
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“Some things that happen are so big you’re never the same afterward.” (39)
Seventh grader Reef Moody is grieving the death of his mother a year ago. He has set himself off from his friends, especially Portia, the girl he likes. He is convinced that he contracted Covid from Portia at her party—a party he begged his mother to let him attend—and passed it to his mother who died a few weeks later, and he is riddled with guilt. He was taken in by his mother’s best friend, but her teen children are not happy with the situation, especially Declan who bullies Reef continually and even gets him into trouble with the school principal.
And strangely, Reef’s memories of his mother are growing dim; he can hardly remember her face and he doesn’t know why. But he does have vivid memories from a life that he knows is not his, a life with a yard and a garden and a rabbit named Jaws. And a few times he has executed karate moves.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town lives Theo Metzinger, a seventh grader who takes karate and grows vegetable and fights with his nemesis, a rabbit named Jaws. Theo is much of a loner to the disappointment of his father, who, as an adolescent, “ruled the school.” And lately Theo is having memories of a lady and feeling an unbearable sadness. When Theo, at his school, begins seeing a different school—different tiles, different walls, a different walkway, and a cupola, he begins investigating and locates Delgado Middle School on the other side of town where he meets Portia and eventually Reef. “At last [Theo] begins, ‘There are things I remember that I know for a fact never happened to me.’ ‘Me too!’ [Reef] jumps in breathlessly.” (94)
Reef is not happy to meet Theo who he feels is stealing his life, at least his past. “It hits me: If Theo has access to my memories. How can he remember what I can’t. The answer is so obvious: He’s not sharing my memories; he’s stealing them.” (97-98) But as the two boys lose more and more memories and have to rely on each other more and more, they realize they need to solve the mystery. Theo realizes that Reef has a lot to lose—his life with his mother. Discovering that they were born on the same day in the same hospital, they research the possible cause of this strange phenomenon and plan a dangerous experiment to reverse it, aided by, strangely enough, Declan.
Told in alternating narratives, this is a story of friendship, family, and the importance of memories. “Memory: the mental process of registering, storing, and retrieving information.” (102), but so much more.
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The Unteachables by Gordon Korman
“In all my years in education, the greatest teacher I’ve ever worked with was a young man named Zachary Kermit.… That was before the Terranova incident turned him into a zombie. He went from the best to the worst.” (188-189)
Mr. Kermit’s only defender in the past 27 years is the current principal, a former colleague. Even though he was not involved in the cheating incident perpetrated by then-7th-grade Jake Terranova, the superintendent has held Kermit responsible for the scandel, moving him from class to class and finally, hoping he will resign and lose the pension his early retirement will earn him, to Room 117, Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class a/k/a The Unteachables.
“’The district wasn’t exactly supportive when the cheating scandal was going on,’ the principal adds. ‘You can’t fault Zachary for feeling abandoned. No wonder he got so burnt out.’” (127)
The seven students in Room 117 have a variety of issues: Jake can’t read; Aldo has anger issues; Mateo lives in the world of movies and television shows; Barnstorm was the top school athlete and never expected to do more than win games, and now he has an injury which is keeping him from participating in sports and forcing him to catch up academically; Rahim’s family situation prevents him from sleeping at night, and he sleeps through all his classes; and Elaine (rhymes with pain) has a reputation, deserved or maybe not, for cruelty and hurting others. And then there is Kiana, a new student who doesn’t even belong in 117. She is staying temporarily with her father and her stepmother who is too busy with the new baby to register her, so, finding Parker’s schedule, she ends up in 117.
“I push open the door and walk into room 117. A plume of smoke is pouring out the single open window. It’s coming from the fire roaring in the wastebasket in the center of the room. A handful of kids are gathered around it, toasting marshmallows skewered on the end of number two pencils.…Oh my God, I’m with the Unteachables.” (11)
As the year begins with their outrageous behaviors, Mr. Kermit (referred as Ribbett by his students) appears to not notice or care—about anything, seldom looking up from his super-large coffee mug and crossword puzzles except to hand out a worksheet each day. Nothing causes him to interact until Barnstorm is treated unfairly by his former football coach and Room 117 is excluded from Spirit Week. Then he springs into action. “[Kiana] throws up her hands in exasperation. ‘Don’t you see? It’s not about the noisemakers. It’s about fairness.’” (84)
As the kids realize that, even if he is not going to teach them, Mr. Kermit is the first teacher to care about them, they rally around him “’The students didn’t fall [in the river],’ she persists. They jumped in because they thought they had to rescue Zachary. Remember the kids we’re talking about—some of the most difficult and antisocial we’ve ever seen. But they’re loyal to him.’” (130)
And with the entrance of the young, idealistic teacher next door, Emma Fountain, daughter of Zachary’s former fiancé, things start to change in Room 117, leading to the hilarious CLEANBUNNIES poster that earns the students puffy-tails [I haven’t laughed this hard in a few years].
When Jake Terranova, former perpetrator of the 7th-grade cheating scandal and present entrepreneur and owner of the widely-successful Terranova Motors, starts taking an interest in the Unteachables to make amends to his former 7th grade teacher and impress the lovely Miss Emma, the Unteachables begin getting taught—and learning. When they discover that the superintendent is trying to fire their teachers, they band together to go just how much they have learned from him.
Told through the multiple narratives of the characters, this is a story that will reach even The Unreaders.
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“In all my years in education, the greatest teacher I’ve ever worked with was a young man named Zachary Kermit.… That was before the Terranova incident turned him into a zombie. He went from the best to the worst.” (188-189)
Mr. Kermit’s only defender in the past 27 years is the current principal, a former colleague. Even though he was not involved in the cheating incident perpetrated by then-7th-grade Jake Terranova, the superintendent has held Kermit responsible for the scandel, moving him from class to class and finally, hoping he will resign and lose the pension his early retirement will earn him, to Room 117, Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class a/k/a The Unteachables.
“’The district wasn’t exactly supportive when the cheating scandal was going on,’ the principal adds. ‘You can’t fault Zachary for feeling abandoned. No wonder he got so burnt out.’” (127)
The seven students in Room 117 have a variety of issues: Jake can’t read; Aldo has anger issues; Mateo lives in the world of movies and television shows; Barnstorm was the top school athlete and never expected to do more than win games, and now he has an injury which is keeping him from participating in sports and forcing him to catch up academically; Rahim’s family situation prevents him from sleeping at night, and he sleeps through all his classes; and Elaine (rhymes with pain) has a reputation, deserved or maybe not, for cruelty and hurting others. And then there is Kiana, a new student who doesn’t even belong in 117. She is staying temporarily with her father and her stepmother who is too busy with the new baby to register her, so, finding Parker’s schedule, she ends up in 117.
“I push open the door and walk into room 117. A plume of smoke is pouring out the single open window. It’s coming from the fire roaring in the wastebasket in the center of the room. A handful of kids are gathered around it, toasting marshmallows skewered on the end of number two pencils.…Oh my God, I’m with the Unteachables.” (11)
As the year begins with their outrageous behaviors, Mr. Kermit (referred as Ribbett by his students) appears to not notice or care—about anything, seldom looking up from his super-large coffee mug and crossword puzzles except to hand out a worksheet each day. Nothing causes him to interact until Barnstorm is treated unfairly by his former football coach and Room 117 is excluded from Spirit Week. Then he springs into action. “[Kiana] throws up her hands in exasperation. ‘Don’t you see? It’s not about the noisemakers. It’s about fairness.’” (84)
As the kids realize that, even if he is not going to teach them, Mr. Kermit is the first teacher to care about them, they rally around him “’The students didn’t fall [in the river],’ she persists. They jumped in because they thought they had to rescue Zachary. Remember the kids we’re talking about—some of the most difficult and antisocial we’ve ever seen. But they’re loyal to him.’” (130)
And with the entrance of the young, idealistic teacher next door, Emma Fountain, daughter of Zachary’s former fiancé, things start to change in Room 117, leading to the hilarious CLEANBUNNIES poster that earns the students puffy-tails [I haven’t laughed this hard in a few years].
When Jake Terranova, former perpetrator of the 7th-grade cheating scandal and present entrepreneur and owner of the widely-successful Terranova Motors, starts taking an interest in the Unteachables to make amends to his former 7th grade teacher and impress the lovely Miss Emma, the Unteachables begin getting taught—and learning. When they discover that the superintendent is trying to fire their teachers, they band together to go just how much they have learned from him.
Told through the multiple narratives of the characters, this is a story that will reach even The Unreaders.
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Ungifted by Gordon Korman
“It was the same wild impulse that could make a guy whack a statue in the butt, setting off a chain of events that reshaped the world—or at least my little corner of it.” (280)
Donovan Curtis (IQ :112) was nothing if not impulsive. A middle schooler who constantly got in trouble, partly to the goading of his two best friends, the Daniels. But even he was surprised when he caused part of a giant statue to roll down the hill into his middle school, smashing the glass doors to the gym and ruining the gym floor, leading to…his enrollment in the Hardcastle Independent School District’s Academy for Scholastic Distinction!
“Gifted? Me? I was the guy who skateboarded down waterslides and shot a Super Soaker at an electric fence. When people heard my name, they thought, ‘Don’t try this at home!’ not ‘gifted.’” (26)
At the Academy he meets truly gifted students, some of whom become friends, some frenenemies, and one of whom risks expulsion by helping Donovan cheat to stay in the program. While the students don’t teach him enough to fool the teachers into thinking he belongs there, Donovan teaches them social skills and saves their summer by convincing his very pregnant sister to share her pregnancy to help his new class mates fulfill their Human Growth and Development credit.
“Open your eyes, Oz. They love him. And it isn’t just because of his sister and the way he drives the robot [for the class robotics competition]. He’s normal, he’s casual, he’s capable of having a good time. He’s everything they can’t seem to master, despite all their brains.” (181)
Each chapter told by the perspective of a different character, readers will fall in love with each of them (except Superintendent Schultz) for different reasons). A fun read in the Korman style that will cause readers to reflect on giftedness.
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“It was the same wild impulse that could make a guy whack a statue in the butt, setting off a chain of events that reshaped the world—or at least my little corner of it.” (280)
Donovan Curtis (IQ :112) was nothing if not impulsive. A middle schooler who constantly got in trouble, partly to the goading of his two best friends, the Daniels. But even he was surprised when he caused part of a giant statue to roll down the hill into his middle school, smashing the glass doors to the gym and ruining the gym floor, leading to…his enrollment in the Hardcastle Independent School District’s Academy for Scholastic Distinction!
“Gifted? Me? I was the guy who skateboarded down waterslides and shot a Super Soaker at an electric fence. When people heard my name, they thought, ‘Don’t try this at home!’ not ‘gifted.’” (26)
At the Academy he meets truly gifted students, some of whom become friends, some frenenemies, and one of whom risks expulsion by helping Donovan cheat to stay in the program. While the students don’t teach him enough to fool the teachers into thinking he belongs there, Donovan teaches them social skills and saves their summer by convincing his very pregnant sister to share her pregnancy to help his new class mates fulfill their Human Growth and Development credit.
“Open your eyes, Oz. They love him. And it isn’t just because of his sister and the way he drives the robot [for the class robotics competition]. He’s normal, he’s casual, he’s capable of having a good time. He’s everything they can’t seem to master, despite all their brains.” (181)
Each chapter told by the perspective of a different character, readers will fall in love with each of them (except Superintendent Schultz) for different reasons). A fun read in the Korman style that will cause readers to reflect on giftedness.
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Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero by Saadia Faruqi
“Suspicion of those unlike us is common human behavior. We don’t trust who we don’t know. But yes, 9/11 was terrible, and it really fueled the fire of hatred in this country.” (184-5)
Sixth grader Yusuf Azeem was born in Texas and is an American; his mother was also born in America and his father was a Pakistani immigrant who runs the popular A to Z Dollar Store in town (and a somewhat a local hero after capturing an intruder threatening his store and customers). The family is Muslim, but, understandably, Yusuf is shocked when sixth grade begins with threatening notes in his locker. When one says, “Go home,” he hurt and confused. Frey is his home. Surely the notes are meant for someone else.
September 11, 2021 is approaching, and when his mother’s younger brother Uncle Rahman comes for a visit, he notes, “The twentieth anniversary of the attacks is coming up soon.” Abba drank some water. “Does it matter? It’s been twenty years.” Uncle Rahman looked stern. “You don’t mean that. You know it still affects us every single day. At work. On the street. At the airport.” (21) Before leaving, Uncle Rahman gives Ausuf the journal he started keeping after the events. “I was your age when 9/11 happened. It was an emotional time for everyone, and it was hard for me to process…. I ended up writing about some of my experiences, trying to figure things out…. My place in the world. How it all changed in an instant, how I became a stranger in my own country.” (23-24)
As the town’s 20th anniversary celebration approaches, Ethan, the sixth grade bully, harasses Yusuf and some of the other Muslim students while his father, leader of the Patriot Sons, makes life difficult for the adult Muslim community, spraying graffiti on the A to Z Dollar Store and trying to halt the construction of the mosque.
Yusuf stands up for other students whom Ethan bullies, and, when Cameron tells him that he shouldn’t “make waves,” that challenging things could be dangerous, Yusuf protests, “I wasn’t being a hero. I had to do that. It was my duty as a Muslim.” (182)
As poorly as his middle school year is going, Yusuf is excited to be captain of the Robotics Club which is preparing for the TRC competition that he has been looking forward to his whole life. Working with his best friend Danial and Cameron, a former friend who Yusuf thought had changed, both members of the Muslim community; his new friend Jared who happens to be Ethan’s cousin; and Madison, the one girl on their team, he forms a circle of allies. As his father tells him, “Life is full of all kinds of people, son. We just have to learn to avoid the bullies and stick with our friends.” (322)
This is a novel that may benefit from some background on the events of September 11, 2001 since the action takes places in 2021 but, read individually, Ausuf’s uncle’s journal will help fill in information. The importance of this particular novel is that is demonstrates that, for some of our citizens and students, “Twenty years. So much time. But things haven’t really changed at all.” (48) One of the major events in the story—when a little computer in his backpack beeped and, instead of questioning him and investigating, Ausuf is thrown in jail for twelve hours—is based on a real event from 2015 where Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim 14-year-old, was arrested at his high school because of a disassembled digital clock he brought to school to show his teachers [https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb].
It is vital that our children learn about 9/11 because, as Ausuf’s mamoo says, “History informs our present and affects our future.” (81)
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“Suspicion of those unlike us is common human behavior. We don’t trust who we don’t know. But yes, 9/11 was terrible, and it really fueled the fire of hatred in this country.” (184-5)
Sixth grader Yusuf Azeem was born in Texas and is an American; his mother was also born in America and his father was a Pakistani immigrant who runs the popular A to Z Dollar Store in town (and a somewhat a local hero after capturing an intruder threatening his store and customers). The family is Muslim, but, understandably, Yusuf is shocked when sixth grade begins with threatening notes in his locker. When one says, “Go home,” he hurt and confused. Frey is his home. Surely the notes are meant for someone else.
September 11, 2021 is approaching, and when his mother’s younger brother Uncle Rahman comes for a visit, he notes, “The twentieth anniversary of the attacks is coming up soon.” Abba drank some water. “Does it matter? It’s been twenty years.” Uncle Rahman looked stern. “You don’t mean that. You know it still affects us every single day. At work. On the street. At the airport.” (21) Before leaving, Uncle Rahman gives Ausuf the journal he started keeping after the events. “I was your age when 9/11 happened. It was an emotional time for everyone, and it was hard for me to process…. I ended up writing about some of my experiences, trying to figure things out…. My place in the world. How it all changed in an instant, how I became a stranger in my own country.” (23-24)
As the town’s 20th anniversary celebration approaches, Ethan, the sixth grade bully, harasses Yusuf and some of the other Muslim students while his father, leader of the Patriot Sons, makes life difficult for the adult Muslim community, spraying graffiti on the A to Z Dollar Store and trying to halt the construction of the mosque.
Yusuf stands up for other students whom Ethan bullies, and, when Cameron tells him that he shouldn’t “make waves,” that challenging things could be dangerous, Yusuf protests, “I wasn’t being a hero. I had to do that. It was my duty as a Muslim.” (182)
As poorly as his middle school year is going, Yusuf is excited to be captain of the Robotics Club which is preparing for the TRC competition that he has been looking forward to his whole life. Working with his best friend Danial and Cameron, a former friend who Yusuf thought had changed, both members of the Muslim community; his new friend Jared who happens to be Ethan’s cousin; and Madison, the one girl on their team, he forms a circle of allies. As his father tells him, “Life is full of all kinds of people, son. We just have to learn to avoid the bullies and stick with our friends.” (322)
This is a novel that may benefit from some background on the events of September 11, 2001 since the action takes places in 2021 but, read individually, Ausuf’s uncle’s journal will help fill in information. The importance of this particular novel is that is demonstrates that, for some of our citizens and students, “Twenty years. So much time. But things haven’t really changed at all.” (48) One of the major events in the story—when a little computer in his backpack beeped and, instead of questioning him and investigating, Ausuf is thrown in jail for twelve hours—is based on a real event from 2015 where Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim 14-year-old, was arrested at his high school because of a disassembled digital clock he brought to school to show his teachers [https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb].
It is vital that our children learn about 9/11 because, as Ausuf’s mamoo says, “History informs our present and affects our future.” (81)
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Trowbridge Road by Marcella Pixley
Since the first AIDS cases were reported in the United States in June 1981, the number of cases and deaths among persons with AIDS increased rapidly during the 1980s. (CDC). By the end of 1983, 2807 cases of AIDS—and 2118 deaths—had been reported. (NYC Aids Memorial).
One of those cases was June’s father.
After June’s father died, her mother, a celloist, shuttered herself up in her house, barely leaving the bedroom, terrified of anything that could possibly cause disease. She wouldn’t go down to the kitchen because of its proximity to the door through which anything could come through, and as a result, June was frequently without food, except when Uncle Toby brought food during the week. Unfortunately, on the visits he was permitted, he missed the signs of his sister-in-law’s mental illness.
When June went out, she was not to play with the other children and she needed to leave any disgustingness behind with endless baths with Clorox bleach. She spent her days in Nana Jean’s copper beech tree watching Trowbridge Road and the world move on without her. “All the comings and goings of life.” (8)
And then Ziggy moved in with Nana Jean. Ziggy’s mother was an addict, abused by her boyfriend. Ziggy had a ferret and a fantastical imagination. And June had a friend who understood her and what she needed.
“[Ziggy’s] heart was beating. It was gentle like my daddy’s heart. It knew what kind of sadness lived inside that house, even before there was such a thing as AIDS. It knew what happens to a person when they hold on to secrets for too long, or what happens to a home when it becomes a holding place for those secrets, It crumbles. It burns.” (288)
As June and Ziggy seek refuge in the magical Majestica where they have control of their lives.
June mother becomes worse until June realizes that she can, or should, no longer cover for her. “When I was alone with her, it was easier to pretend that things made sense. But with Uncle Toby in the kitchen, cringing every time she spoke, I found myself suddenly off balance. It was as though I had been walking on a rope bridge a hundred feet up. The bridge swayed back and forth over a raging river, but I had been keeping myself steady by pretending the bridge was strong.…I suddenly saw that the bridge was made of fayed rope, and with every step I swayed from a dizzying height. That raging water I thought was lovely would actually kill me if I missed a step.” (172-3)
The two children find help though the adults who love them—Nana Jean and Uncle Toby.
This is the story of children and adults dealing with many of the problems faced by today’s families—mental illness, grief, abandonment, abuse, addiction, and bullying. This is a story of the destruction caused by secrets and the healing possible though relationships and those who believe in magic. It is a compassionate story that will break hearts and give hope.
Point of interest: “Trowbridge” is a name which probably referred to a felled trunk serving as a rough-and-ready bridge.
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Since the first AIDS cases were reported in the United States in June 1981, the number of cases and deaths among persons with AIDS increased rapidly during the 1980s. (CDC). By the end of 1983, 2807 cases of AIDS—and 2118 deaths—had been reported. (NYC Aids Memorial).
One of those cases was June’s father.
After June’s father died, her mother, a celloist, shuttered herself up in her house, barely leaving the bedroom, terrified of anything that could possibly cause disease. She wouldn’t go down to the kitchen because of its proximity to the door through which anything could come through, and as a result, June was frequently without food, except when Uncle Toby brought food during the week. Unfortunately, on the visits he was permitted, he missed the signs of his sister-in-law’s mental illness.
When June went out, she was not to play with the other children and she needed to leave any disgustingness behind with endless baths with Clorox bleach. She spent her days in Nana Jean’s copper beech tree watching Trowbridge Road and the world move on without her. “All the comings and goings of life.” (8)
And then Ziggy moved in with Nana Jean. Ziggy’s mother was an addict, abused by her boyfriend. Ziggy had a ferret and a fantastical imagination. And June had a friend who understood her and what she needed.
“[Ziggy’s] heart was beating. It was gentle like my daddy’s heart. It knew what kind of sadness lived inside that house, even before there was such a thing as AIDS. It knew what happens to a person when they hold on to secrets for too long, or what happens to a home when it becomes a holding place for those secrets, It crumbles. It burns.” (288)
As June and Ziggy seek refuge in the magical Majestica where they have control of their lives.
June mother becomes worse until June realizes that she can, or should, no longer cover for her. “When I was alone with her, it was easier to pretend that things made sense. But with Uncle Toby in the kitchen, cringing every time she spoke, I found myself suddenly off balance. It was as though I had been walking on a rope bridge a hundred feet up. The bridge swayed back and forth over a raging river, but I had been keeping myself steady by pretending the bridge was strong.…I suddenly saw that the bridge was made of fayed rope, and with every step I swayed from a dizzying height. That raging water I thought was lovely would actually kill me if I missed a step.” (172-3)
The two children find help though the adults who love them—Nana Jean and Uncle Toby.
This is the story of children and adults dealing with many of the problems faced by today’s families—mental illness, grief, abandonment, abuse, addiction, and bullying. This is a story of the destruction caused by secrets and the healing possible though relationships and those who believe in magic. It is a compassionate story that will break hearts and give hope.
Point of interest: “Trowbridge” is a name which probably referred to a felled trunk serving as a rough-and-ready bridge.
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Operation Do-Over by Gordon Korman
I’ve already seen that everything in my life doesn’t have to go exactly the way it went the first time around. (123)
Who has never wished for a “Do Over”? Sometimes it is something little, like a golf swing or studying for that test, but sometimes it is a major event, something that has affected our life.
Mason and Ty were best friends from age three or even before that, before they even knew what “friends” were. They were actually even closer than best friends, finishing each other’s sentences and “We can look at each other and crack up laughing at a joke neither of us has to say out loud.” (8-9) Both considered nerds, bullied by Dominic and Miggy, interested in school—especially science—and obsessed with time travel. “TY and I may not be cool, but we’ve got each other’s backs one thousand percent. Plus, we’re smart, so it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything middle school could throw at us that we can’t handle.” (11) But in seventh grade, it did—a new student, Ava Petrakis.
Ava turns out to be the nicest, prettiest, smartest girl, and she is popular with everyone, but she chooses to spend time with Mason and Ty. Realizing they both have a crush on Ava, they make a pact not to pursue their interest. But when Mason and Ava kiss at the Harvest Festival, the friendship ends.
Five years later, Mason and Ty are still not friends and an incident occurs which has far-reaching repercussions. After a car accident Mason ends up going back in time to his 12-year-old self with a chance at a Do-Over. Having studied time travel for years, Mason knows that he has to be careful how his actions affect the future, but he just can’t resist making some changes. Can he save his parents’ marriage; can he train his beloved dog not to run into the path of a Roto-Rooter truck; can he actually earn the respect of the class bullies; and, most important, can he avoid Ava and keep his friendship with Ty?
Well-written with humor and pathos, featuring engaging characters (male and female) and a protagonist-narrator whom readers will champion from the beginning through his “two futures,” this novel has everything: a plot with twists and turns, bullies, nerds, football players, (and those who perform dual roles), time travel, crushes, and a dog. Spanning Mason’s 7th grade and 12th grade lives, Gordon Korman writes this one for readers of all ages.
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I’ve already seen that everything in my life doesn’t have to go exactly the way it went the first time around. (123)
Who has never wished for a “Do Over”? Sometimes it is something little, like a golf swing or studying for that test, but sometimes it is a major event, something that has affected our life.
Mason and Ty were best friends from age three or even before that, before they even knew what “friends” were. They were actually even closer than best friends, finishing each other’s sentences and “We can look at each other and crack up laughing at a joke neither of us has to say out loud.” (8-9) Both considered nerds, bullied by Dominic and Miggy, interested in school—especially science—and obsessed with time travel. “TY and I may not be cool, but we’ve got each other’s backs one thousand percent. Plus, we’re smart, so it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything middle school could throw at us that we can’t handle.” (11) But in seventh grade, it did—a new student, Ava Petrakis.
Ava turns out to be the nicest, prettiest, smartest girl, and she is popular with everyone, but she chooses to spend time with Mason and Ty. Realizing they both have a crush on Ava, they make a pact not to pursue their interest. But when Mason and Ava kiss at the Harvest Festival, the friendship ends.
Five years later, Mason and Ty are still not friends and an incident occurs which has far-reaching repercussions. After a car accident Mason ends up going back in time to his 12-year-old self with a chance at a Do-Over. Having studied time travel for years, Mason knows that he has to be careful how his actions affect the future, but he just can’t resist making some changes. Can he save his parents’ marriage; can he train his beloved dog not to run into the path of a Roto-Rooter truck; can he actually earn the respect of the class bullies; and, most important, can he avoid Ava and keep his friendship with Ty?
Well-written with humor and pathos, featuring engaging characters (male and female) and a protagonist-narrator whom readers will champion from the beginning through his “two futures,” this novel has everything: a plot with twists and turns, bullies, nerds, football players, (and those who perform dual roles), time travel, crushes, and a dog. Spanning Mason’s 7th grade and 12th grade lives, Gordon Korman writes this one for readers of all ages.
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Dear Student by Elly Swartz
Her best —and only—friend has moved across the country, her father left to join the Peace Corps, and her mother had to rent out their house and move Autumn and her little sister, Pickle, above her veterinary clinic. Navigating middle school is tough, even though kids some make it look easy; navigating middle school when you are shy and have lost your best friend and father and home is hard.
In his postcards her father encourages shy Autumn to seize the day and find her “one thing.” Autumn thinks her one thing may be serving as the secret writer of the Dear Student column of the school paper. “It’s so much easier to find the words when they aren’t for me. When I don’t have to say them out loud.” (98) She is surprised but delighted when she is chosen. Her advisor sees something in her that she is not sure is there, and he advises recommends that she just speak from her heart.
Autumn finds that she can give good advice and, as the year begins, she makes two new friends, Cooper who just moved to their town, and Logan, who seems to have no trouble making friends and talking to people. Autumn finds her relationship with these two to be complicated.
Both friends have their challenges: Logan’s mother is a human rights attorney and rarely home which makes Logan needy, and Cooper’s mother works for the beauty products company that Autumn and Logan want to protest against because of their animal testing policy. “I’m a bundle of confusion. I have two friends who want something different. Something opposite.”
Being Dear Student in secret is complicated. “The friend who doesn’t know that I know that she asked me [as Dear Student] for advice is taking the advice I gave, But the other friend who doesn’t know I’m the one giving advice is mad about the advice I [as Dear Student] gave.” (192) Her mother advises, “When you care about both sides of something [safety of animals and Cooper’s mother’s job], it can also feel complicated.… When fighting for something you believe in, you have to stay true to yourself and focus on the parts you can control.” (218)
Middle grade friendships are challenging. Logan is not quite the true friend she appears to be. When Logan forgets her birthday party, “I don’t tell her that I was never really mad. Just sad. That being forgotten is the thing I am most afraid of.” (112) That and some of her other actions make Autumn question friendship. Luckily, Cooper stays true, and throughout all this, Autumn has the support of Prisha, even from thousands of miles away, “You can’t be afraid to do things that are important to you…. And just be you, okay?” (252)
And when it matters most, Autumn learns to speak up, as herself, not as Dear Student.
This is a book which acknowledges the complications of relationships and encourages young adolescents to find their one thing.
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Her best —and only—friend has moved across the country, her father left to join the Peace Corps, and her mother had to rent out their house and move Autumn and her little sister, Pickle, above her veterinary clinic. Navigating middle school is tough, even though kids some make it look easy; navigating middle school when you are shy and have lost your best friend and father and home is hard.
In his postcards her father encourages shy Autumn to seize the day and find her “one thing.” Autumn thinks her one thing may be serving as the secret writer of the Dear Student column of the school paper. “It’s so much easier to find the words when they aren’t for me. When I don’t have to say them out loud.” (98) She is surprised but delighted when she is chosen. Her advisor sees something in her that she is not sure is there, and he advises recommends that she just speak from her heart.
Autumn finds that she can give good advice and, as the year begins, she makes two new friends, Cooper who just moved to their town, and Logan, who seems to have no trouble making friends and talking to people. Autumn finds her relationship with these two to be complicated.
Both friends have their challenges: Logan’s mother is a human rights attorney and rarely home which makes Logan needy, and Cooper’s mother works for the beauty products company that Autumn and Logan want to protest against because of their animal testing policy. “I’m a bundle of confusion. I have two friends who want something different. Something opposite.”
Being Dear Student in secret is complicated. “The friend who doesn’t know that I know that she asked me [as Dear Student] for advice is taking the advice I gave, But the other friend who doesn’t know I’m the one giving advice is mad about the advice I [as Dear Student] gave.” (192) Her mother advises, “When you care about both sides of something [safety of animals and Cooper’s mother’s job], it can also feel complicated.… When fighting for something you believe in, you have to stay true to yourself and focus on the parts you can control.” (218)
Middle grade friendships are challenging. Logan is not quite the true friend she appears to be. When Logan forgets her birthday party, “I don’t tell her that I was never really mad. Just sad. That being forgotten is the thing I am most afraid of.” (112) That and some of her other actions make Autumn question friendship. Luckily, Cooper stays true, and throughout all this, Autumn has the support of Prisha, even from thousands of miles away, “You can’t be afraid to do things that are important to you…. And just be you, okay?” (252)
And when it matters most, Autumn learns to speak up, as herself, not as Dear Student.
This is a book which acknowledges the complications of relationships and encourages young adolescents to find their one thing.
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Camo Girl by Kekla Magoon
Ella and Z are sixth-grade outcasts and they are best friends. But they are not best friends because they are outcasts; they are there to support each other—no questions asked, no matter how weirdly Z acts and how Ella looks. However, Ella longs to be part of a group of friends, even though most of the class makes fun of her. Ella’s mother is black and her father was white, and she’s the only black girl in their sixth grade class. When a new student befriends Ella, she thinks she may have to choose between popularity and Z, but just maybe the popular Bailey, who has his own view of reality, can help both of them.
This is an important story written for readers in Grades 5 and up. As a reader who requires a provocative story, well-developed diverse characters, and good writing to help her attention, I was thrilled to again find a book that I read straight through and that would be a good choice for young adolescents, both boys and girls, who just want to be accepted by their peers.
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Ella and Z are sixth-grade outcasts and they are best friends. But they are not best friends because they are outcasts; they are there to support each other—no questions asked, no matter how weirdly Z acts and how Ella looks. However, Ella longs to be part of a group of friends, even though most of the class makes fun of her. Ella’s mother is black and her father was white, and she’s the only black girl in their sixth grade class. When a new student befriends Ella, she thinks she may have to choose between popularity and Z, but just maybe the popular Bailey, who has his own view of reality, can help both of them.
This is an important story written for readers in Grades 5 and up. As a reader who requires a provocative story, well-developed diverse characters, and good writing to help her attention, I was thrilled to again find a book that I read straight through and that would be a good choice for young adolescents, both boys and girls, who just want to be accepted by their peers.
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Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence by Sonja Thomas
Twelve-year-old Mira Williams is having a bad summer. Her father lost his job, so money is tight and her mother is working and dad now cooks; best friend Thomas has moved to Washington, D.C.; her enemy and major Science Fair competitor, Tamika Smith, has moved into Thomas’ old house and, improbably, seems interested in hanging out; and Mira’s beloved cat, Sir Fig Newton, has developed diabetes, “the silent cat killer,” an expensive illness to treat.
However, Mira is a budding scientist—her hero is Einstein, and she plans to become an astronomer-astrophysicist. But does she have the four qualities of every great scientist: patience, curiosity, being observant, and persistence? And will those qualities help her solve her problems?
As Mira wrestles with Thomas making a new friend in D.C. and her “frenemyship” with Tamika, who she learns is not as Mira assumed, and creating a plan to raise the money needed to save Fig, she also discovers, not religion, but the power of faith. As her Gran tells her, “Faith allows for possibilities.” (99)
“I was strong like miranium. I wasn’t afraid. I believed. My faith was in the facts. The indestructible, indisputable facts.” (105) Although she also learns that sometimes the facts are not what you originally believe.
This is a story of persistence, resilience, friendship, and support—and science.
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Twelve-year-old Mira Williams is having a bad summer. Her father lost his job, so money is tight and her mother is working and dad now cooks; best friend Thomas has moved to Washington, D.C.; her enemy and major Science Fair competitor, Tamika Smith, has moved into Thomas’ old house and, improbably, seems interested in hanging out; and Mira’s beloved cat, Sir Fig Newton, has developed diabetes, “the silent cat killer,” an expensive illness to treat.
However, Mira is a budding scientist—her hero is Einstein, and she plans to become an astronomer-astrophysicist. But does she have the four qualities of every great scientist: patience, curiosity, being observant, and persistence? And will those qualities help her solve her problems?
As Mira wrestles with Thomas making a new friend in D.C. and her “frenemyship” with Tamika, who she learns is not as Mira assumed, and creating a plan to raise the money needed to save Fig, she also discovers, not religion, but the power of faith. As her Gran tells her, “Faith allows for possibilities.” (99)
“I was strong like miranium. I wasn’t afraid. I believed. My faith was in the facts. The indestructible, indisputable facts.” (105) Although she also learns that sometimes the facts are not what you originally believe.
This is a story of persistence, resilience, friendship, and support—and science.
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Merci Suarez Plays It Cool by Meg Medina
Merci’s story (short story "Sol Painting" from the anthology Flying Lessons and novels Merci Suarez Changes Gears and Merci Suarez Can't Dance) continues in the summer before 8th grade. All her friends are away. Things at Las Casitas haven’t changed much although her aunt is still dating Simon, Roli can’t afford his next year of premed and is home working at Walgreen’s and planning to attend the local Junior College, and Marci’s grandfather Lolo’s Alzheimer’s is worsening. And Marco, the twins’ father shows up for the first time in years.
Before school begins, Tia pays for Merci to get a new haircut. “’Imagine walking into school looking like someone brand-new. Merci 2.0.’ I sit there blinking at the thought of being upgraded. Should I want to be someone new?’” (81) The new haircut is a success, but Merci questions, “But what about the old me? I wonder. Where will she go?” (82)
Merci has never been one of the popular crowd, but she has friends—Hannah, Lena, Edna (sort of a frenenemy), and Wilson who is a great friend but also possibly becoming a crush. The popular girls, Avery and Mercede,s are Merci’s soccer teammates, but she keeps hoping that they may become friends. “The whole time, though, I’m watching everyone at Avery’s table from the corner of my eye. Those kids are magnets, even though I don’t want them to be. What is it, I wonder, that makes them seem so cool? And more important, are they?” (107)
The year fluctuates between highs and lows.
At school Merci earns a position as an aid in the guidance office where she becomes aware that some students meet in support groups, the surprise being Edna who is working to improve her social skills, and when soccer practice begins, Merci shows her leadership skills in guiding a new sixth grader to success. Wilson and Merci’s friendship continues to grow and so do her feelings for him, and, when he offers her a ticket to the football game, she wonders if it is a date.
Lolo becomes worse. At times he doesn’t even recognize Merci, who is devastated at the loss of her best friend. Finally, the family hires him an aid.
When the 8th graders begin planning their October Field Trip to St Augustine, Merci is invited to share a room with her friends but also with the popular Avery, Mackenzie, and Lindsey. “It will be a soccer-team room.” Of course, she knows it may be just because her soccer teammates, “…don’t want to get stuck with someone random.” (171) When her friends find out that, even though she plans to room with them, she has not turned Avery down, she risks losing them.
During the field trip when Merci sneaks out of her room with her friends to meet Avery and her friends to play sardines, a tragedy occurs. Lolo has had a stroke and, before Mami can drive Merci home from St. Augustine, he dies. Overwhelmed by grief, Merci learns who her true friends are. Returning to school in a daze, she has forgotten to bring her lunch. Her friends notice and “A few minutes later, they come back with their trays. Lena hands me half a roast beef sandwich. Hanna has bought an extra carton of milk and a bag of my favorite chips. Edna sets down a slice of a la carte key lime pie near my elbow. ‘Extra whipped cream,’ she says. ‘I had to beg.’” (309-310) And when Wilson gave Merci the gifts for the twins she was unable to buy when she left the trip, unable to visit the pirate museum, she feels “This is like something that wants to lift me into the air. He didn’t leave me stranded when he thought we were in trouble with Miss McDaniels for playing sardines. And when I disappeared from the trip, he thought about what I would miss.…Lolo would have called Wilson a caballero.” (329)
Merci’s 3+ series story ends with valuable lessons about friendship, family, and loss to help adolescents navigate the hard parts of life.
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Merci’s story (short story "Sol Painting" from the anthology Flying Lessons and novels Merci Suarez Changes Gears and Merci Suarez Can't Dance) continues in the summer before 8th grade. All her friends are away. Things at Las Casitas haven’t changed much although her aunt is still dating Simon, Roli can’t afford his next year of premed and is home working at Walgreen’s and planning to attend the local Junior College, and Marci’s grandfather Lolo’s Alzheimer’s is worsening. And Marco, the twins’ father shows up for the first time in years.
Before school begins, Tia pays for Merci to get a new haircut. “’Imagine walking into school looking like someone brand-new. Merci 2.0.’ I sit there blinking at the thought of being upgraded. Should I want to be someone new?’” (81) The new haircut is a success, but Merci questions, “But what about the old me? I wonder. Where will she go?” (82)
Merci has never been one of the popular crowd, but she has friends—Hannah, Lena, Edna (sort of a frenenemy), and Wilson who is a great friend but also possibly becoming a crush. The popular girls, Avery and Mercede,s are Merci’s soccer teammates, but she keeps hoping that they may become friends. “The whole time, though, I’m watching everyone at Avery’s table from the corner of my eye. Those kids are magnets, even though I don’t want them to be. What is it, I wonder, that makes them seem so cool? And more important, are they?” (107)
The year fluctuates between highs and lows.
At school Merci earns a position as an aid in the guidance office where she becomes aware that some students meet in support groups, the surprise being Edna who is working to improve her social skills, and when soccer practice begins, Merci shows her leadership skills in guiding a new sixth grader to success. Wilson and Merci’s friendship continues to grow and so do her feelings for him, and, when he offers her a ticket to the football game, she wonders if it is a date.
Lolo becomes worse. At times he doesn’t even recognize Merci, who is devastated at the loss of her best friend. Finally, the family hires him an aid.
When the 8th graders begin planning their October Field Trip to St Augustine, Merci is invited to share a room with her friends but also with the popular Avery, Mackenzie, and Lindsey. “It will be a soccer-team room.” Of course, she knows it may be just because her soccer teammates, “…don’t want to get stuck with someone random.” (171) When her friends find out that, even though she plans to room with them, she has not turned Avery down, she risks losing them.
During the field trip when Merci sneaks out of her room with her friends to meet Avery and her friends to play sardines, a tragedy occurs. Lolo has had a stroke and, before Mami can drive Merci home from St. Augustine, he dies. Overwhelmed by grief, Merci learns who her true friends are. Returning to school in a daze, she has forgotten to bring her lunch. Her friends notice and “A few minutes later, they come back with their trays. Lena hands me half a roast beef sandwich. Hanna has bought an extra carton of milk and a bag of my favorite chips. Edna sets down a slice of a la carte key lime pie near my elbow. ‘Extra whipped cream,’ she says. ‘I had to beg.’” (309-310) And when Wilson gave Merci the gifts for the twins she was unable to buy when she left the trip, unable to visit the pirate museum, she feels “This is like something that wants to lift me into the air. He didn’t leave me stranded when he thought we were in trouble with Miss McDaniels for playing sardines. And when I disappeared from the trip, he thought about what I would miss.…Lolo would have called Wilson a caballero.” (329)
Merci’s 3+ series story ends with valuable lessons about friendship, family, and loss to help adolescents navigate the hard parts of life.
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Falling Short by Ernesto Cisneros
Sixth graders Isaac and Marco are best friends not only because they are very, very good friends but because they each want the best for the other. Isaac is athletically gifted and a star of the basketball team but has problems with school work; Marco is academically gifted but wants to become an athlete to win the approval of his father who left home for a new girlfriend and her son. Isaac’s father also left home but because his drinking problem has gotten the best of him. “Drinking had pretty much become more important than either Ama ]mother] or me.” (92)
When very short Marco learns of 5’3” NBA player Muggsy Bogues, he decides to try out for the team and, with the determination he applies to everything, studies YouTube videos and practices nonstop to make the team. Isaac becomes his coach and even figures out how he can change his plays to help Marco be successful. “That’s probably the one thing that separates [Isaac] from every other kid I’ve ever met. He never judges me. Never makes me feel stupid.” (154) And when Isaac helps Marco with his schoolwork (in a strange turn of events), he learns that he is smarter than he thinks.
Told in alternating narratives by Isaac and Marco, this is a story of true friendship, broken families, bullying, sports (I learned a lot of basketball terms!), teamwork and collaboration, featuring Latinx and Jewish characters. It is not a story of falling short.
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Sixth graders Isaac and Marco are best friends not only because they are very, very good friends but because they each want the best for the other. Isaac is athletically gifted and a star of the basketball team but has problems with school work; Marco is academically gifted but wants to become an athlete to win the approval of his father who left home for a new girlfriend and her son. Isaac’s father also left home but because his drinking problem has gotten the best of him. “Drinking had pretty much become more important than either Ama ]mother] or me.” (92)
When very short Marco learns of 5’3” NBA player Muggsy Bogues, he decides to try out for the team and, with the determination he applies to everything, studies YouTube videos and practices nonstop to make the team. Isaac becomes his coach and even figures out how he can change his plays to help Marco be successful. “That’s probably the one thing that separates [Isaac] from every other kid I’ve ever met. He never judges me. Never makes me feel stupid.” (154) And when Isaac helps Marco with his schoolwork (in a strange turn of events), he learns that he is smarter than he thinks.
Told in alternating narratives by Isaac and Marco, this is a story of true friendship, broken families, bullying, sports (I learned a lot of basketball terms!), teamwork and collaboration, featuring Latinx and Jewish characters. It is not a story of falling short.
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Hidden Truths by Elly Swartz
“You may not get to choose what sport you play or when you get to play it, but you get to choose who you are. And in the end, that’s what matters most.” (194)
When Dani makes the all-boy baseball team, she is sure she has reached her goal. But when she goes on a camping trip with her best friend Eric and the camper explodes, trapping her inside, events seem to be keeping her from achieving her dream. Dani sustains injuries that, no matter how determined she is, will keep her from pitching this year.
And Eric, even though he went into the burning camper and rescued Dani, is afraid that, characteristically forgetful as he is, he left on the stove burner the night before and caused the fire. When he tells Dani, she can’t forgive him and allows her new friend, the popular Meadow, to call him a loser in front of the other kids in the school. Since she always has had his back, Eric is shocked, especially when they find out that he was not responsible for the incident and the bullying continues.
Eric finds out that the actual cause of the fire was a defective remote-control toy, and with his new crush Rachel and the help of a podcaster, takes the necessary steps to ensure the public is aware and that the manufacturer is stopped from producing the toy and made to recall those on the market. Eric has turned his ADD and ability to see things from different angles into his superpower.
Meanwhile Dani is not sure she likes the person she is becoming, especially when she finds out that her new friend has been telling lies.
“My brain spins. Meadow’s not the person I thought she was. She’s the person Eric knew she was.
My eyes sting.
I miss my old life.
Tears hit my lap.
I miss me.” (206)
Told in alternating narratives by Dani and Eric, Hidden Truths is a story of having a dream and changing that dream without changing yourself. It is a story of loss and what constitutes friendship and standing up to make a difference. Dani and Eric’s story can teach preteen readers many things about themselves, how to treat their peers, how to be part of a team, and how to see the person behind the person. It is a story about baseball, superheroes, and doughnuts—of love, forgiveness, and identity. It is a story that will resonate with readers and provide a map for those who are navigating the hidden truths of middle school.
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“You may not get to choose what sport you play or when you get to play it, but you get to choose who you are. And in the end, that’s what matters most.” (194)
When Dani makes the all-boy baseball team, she is sure she has reached her goal. But when she goes on a camping trip with her best friend Eric and the camper explodes, trapping her inside, events seem to be keeping her from achieving her dream. Dani sustains injuries that, no matter how determined she is, will keep her from pitching this year.
And Eric, even though he went into the burning camper and rescued Dani, is afraid that, characteristically forgetful as he is, he left on the stove burner the night before and caused the fire. When he tells Dani, she can’t forgive him and allows her new friend, the popular Meadow, to call him a loser in front of the other kids in the school. Since she always has had his back, Eric is shocked, especially when they find out that he was not responsible for the incident and the bullying continues.
Eric finds out that the actual cause of the fire was a defective remote-control toy, and with his new crush Rachel and the help of a podcaster, takes the necessary steps to ensure the public is aware and that the manufacturer is stopped from producing the toy and made to recall those on the market. Eric has turned his ADD and ability to see things from different angles into his superpower.
Meanwhile Dani is not sure she likes the person she is becoming, especially when she finds out that her new friend has been telling lies.
“My brain spins. Meadow’s not the person I thought she was. She’s the person Eric knew she was.
My eyes sting.
I miss my old life.
Tears hit my lap.
I miss me.” (206)
Told in alternating narratives by Dani and Eric, Hidden Truths is a story of having a dream and changing that dream without changing yourself. It is a story of loss and what constitutes friendship and standing up to make a difference. Dani and Eric’s story can teach preteen readers many things about themselves, how to treat their peers, how to be part of a team, and how to see the person behind the person. It is a story about baseball, superheroes, and doughnuts—of love, forgiveness, and identity. It is a story that will resonate with readers and provide a map for those who are navigating the hidden truths of middle school.
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In Your Shoes by Donna Gephart
It is difficult to write about loss—because everyone experiences loss differently, but death has become all too common, and teachers need novels to help their students deal with loss and gain empathy for their peers who are coping with grief. “1.2 million children will lose a parent to death before age 15” (Dr. Elizabeth Weller, Dir. Ohio State University Hospitals, 1991); [last year] 400,000 people under 25 suffered from the death of a loved one (National Mental Health Association). Sometimes, especially in multi-generational households, the death of a grandparent affects a child as much as the loss of a parent.
Grieving her mother’s death, Amy is torn from her best friend and her home in Chicago to live in her uncle’s funeral home in Buckington, Pennsylvania. Her father is learning the funeral trade and is away Monday to Friday, and Amy, even with her optimism, is not making new friends. Life hits a low when she sits down with girls in the middle school cafeteria—and they move to another table! But she meets a new best friend, Tate, a weight lifer with interesting fashion sense, in the school library, and they spend their lunch hours talking stories and eating Jelly Krimpets.
Meanwhile Miles is still grieving the loss of his grandmother while worrying about his grandfather dying. In fact, Miles worries about everything. His family owns Buckington Bowl, and bowling the perfect game, especially while beating his best friend Randall, is his goal.
And a bowling shoe is how Miles and Amy connect—literally, both at the beginning and the end of this delightful middle-grades novel. In addition to Randall and Tate, Amy and Miles become each others’ support system through the special bond of grief and loss.
A delightful novel about the power of family and friendship which features two sports uncommon for a middle-grades book, female weight-lifting and bowling. The story also conveys the power of story, those we read and those we write.
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It is difficult to write about loss—because everyone experiences loss differently, but death has become all too common, and teachers need novels to help their students deal with loss and gain empathy for their peers who are coping with grief. “1.2 million children will lose a parent to death before age 15” (Dr. Elizabeth Weller, Dir. Ohio State University Hospitals, 1991); [last year] 400,000 people under 25 suffered from the death of a loved one (National Mental Health Association). Sometimes, especially in multi-generational households, the death of a grandparent affects a child as much as the loss of a parent.
Grieving her mother’s death, Amy is torn from her best friend and her home in Chicago to live in her uncle’s funeral home in Buckington, Pennsylvania. Her father is learning the funeral trade and is away Monday to Friday, and Amy, even with her optimism, is not making new friends. Life hits a low when she sits down with girls in the middle school cafeteria—and they move to another table! But she meets a new best friend, Tate, a weight lifer with interesting fashion sense, in the school library, and they spend their lunch hours talking stories and eating Jelly Krimpets.
Meanwhile Miles is still grieving the loss of his grandmother while worrying about his grandfather dying. In fact, Miles worries about everything. His family owns Buckington Bowl, and bowling the perfect game, especially while beating his best friend Randall, is his goal.
And a bowling shoe is how Miles and Amy connect—literally, both at the beginning and the end of this delightful middle-grades novel. In addition to Randall and Tate, Amy and Miles become each others’ support system through the special bond of grief and loss.
A delightful novel about the power of family and friendship which features two sports uncommon for a middle-grades book, female weight-lifting and bowling. The story also conveys the power of story, those we read and those we write.
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The Secret of the Dragon Gems by Rajani LaRocca and Chris Baron
There is no such thing as a “perfect” book. Readers have differing interests in topics, characters, plots, and writing styles, and as teachers, librarians, and parents (or grandparents), we need to help make, or find, the match for our readers. However, this new novel has enough to engage diverse readers, grades 4-8. It has male and female multicultural protagonists; a mystery; science fiction; geology; adventure; codes; Indian and Jewish culture, religion, and recipes; a possibly evil villain; new middle school friends and frenemies; and a feisty grandmother.
“When our bar mitzvah time comes, we learn about observing the mitzvot, which is sort of our version of what you [Tripti] were saying—good triumphing over evil.… It’s cool how different religions can be so much the same.” (Sam, 158)
Eleven year old Tripti Kapoor from Massachusetts and eleven-year-old Sam Cohen from California meet on the last night of Camp Dilloway where they become instant friends when they find two glowing rocks; each takes one home. Through letters, emails, field journals, and a chat program, they share the growing mysterious and magical qualities of their rocks which they name Jasper and Opal, as well as the challenges and shifting friendships they are navigating in middle school. Besides their stones, Tripti and Sam share a love of the three-book series THE DRAGON GEMS, especially Volume 3 through which their stones appear to be sending them codes. The author of THE DRAGON GEMS is another secret to be solved. From different sides of the country, they collaborate to send Jasper and Opal home.
Meanwhile, camp director Sanford P. Dilloway, III, is trying to find the missing stones, and readers are privy to not only his letters to the campers but his personal journal. It appears that he will stop at nothing to get his hands on the stones—for reasons unknown.
The variety of formats (and fonts)—emails, journals, chats, MeTube Video transcripts, drawings, and The Dragon Gems Volume 3 excerpts—will especially appeal to our more reluctant readers as will the differing perspectives of the main characters provided by the co-authors. I found myself reading faster and faster to see how it would end.
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There is no such thing as a “perfect” book. Readers have differing interests in topics, characters, plots, and writing styles, and as teachers, librarians, and parents (or grandparents), we need to help make, or find, the match for our readers. However, this new novel has enough to engage diverse readers, grades 4-8. It has male and female multicultural protagonists; a mystery; science fiction; geology; adventure; codes; Indian and Jewish culture, religion, and recipes; a possibly evil villain; new middle school friends and frenemies; and a feisty grandmother.
“When our bar mitzvah time comes, we learn about observing the mitzvot, which is sort of our version of what you [Tripti] were saying—good triumphing over evil.… It’s cool how different religions can be so much the same.” (Sam, 158)
Eleven year old Tripti Kapoor from Massachusetts and eleven-year-old Sam Cohen from California meet on the last night of Camp Dilloway where they become instant friends when they find two glowing rocks; each takes one home. Through letters, emails, field journals, and a chat program, they share the growing mysterious and magical qualities of their rocks which they name Jasper and Opal, as well as the challenges and shifting friendships they are navigating in middle school. Besides their stones, Tripti and Sam share a love of the three-book series THE DRAGON GEMS, especially Volume 3 through which their stones appear to be sending them codes. The author of THE DRAGON GEMS is another secret to be solved. From different sides of the country, they collaborate to send Jasper and Opal home.
Meanwhile, camp director Sanford P. Dilloway, III, is trying to find the missing stones, and readers are privy to not only his letters to the campers but his personal journal. It appears that he will stop at nothing to get his hands on the stones—for reasons unknown.
The variety of formats (and fonts)—emails, journals, chats, MeTube Video transcripts, drawings, and The Dragon Gems Volume 3 excerpts—will especially appeal to our more reluctant readers as will the differing perspectives of the main characters provided by the co-authors. I found myself reading faster and faster to see how it would end.
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Virtually Me by Shelly Brown and Chad Morris
Four seventh graders attending Virtual Reality School for difference reasons, and a story told from four points of view.
Hunter, popular, good looking, lacrosse star, and “the guy that all the girls liked” has Alopecia and is starting to bald in spots. For school he designs his avatar to look just like him, wearing his lacrosse shirt, with still-flowing blond hair.
Edelsabeth Dahan-Miller is enrolled in VR school by her mother who thinks she may be too obsessed with her looks, fashion, and appearing in the top three on Parker’s website which ranks the cuteness of the girls in school. She also could be mean to others and judgmental, and her mother wants her to just be happy and learn that she is worth knowing “No matter how you look.” Her mother requires Edelle to design her avatar as simple, just her with no high fashion or makeup. She actually goes more basic and, embarrassed, changes her avatar’s name to Vanya.
Bradley Horvath is a big, awkward guy who loves to dance and has been bullied and made fun of since third grade. He is delighted to go to a virtual school and reinvent himself; with the approval of his parents, he designs his avatar with a totally new look—tall, square-jawed, with pink hair and fashionable clothes—and a new name, Daebak.
Last year Hunter, Edelle, and Bradley attended the same middle school where Edelle and Hunter were good friends who flirted, and where Bradley made fun of Bradley and, as she rose in popularity, Edelle ignored Bradley. Of course, only Edelle/Vanya and Bradley/Daebak recognize Hunter.
At school orientation Hunter comes into direct competition shooting baskets with a boy in a yellow tracksuit. As the three much later learn, Jasper, who has become their teammate and coach in the school’s VR Games competition and friend, has cystic fibrosis.
As the four become more involved with each other, new friends, and the school, a last new team member is Keiko who appears not to want to make friends or participate in really anything as she answers every query or comment with “Whatever.” The four feel they want to bring her out of her shell especially Vanya who designs a school dance section for those uncomfortable with traditional school dances.
Readers will enjoy getting to know these characters and following their interactions and growing friendship as they navigate VR school, their new identities, and the lessons they learn through their experiences. And what occurs when disaster strikes at the school dance, leading to a in-person meet.
I was mesmerized as I read Chad Morris and Shelly Brown’s novel. Not familiar with virtual reality in the least, young readers may be more adept visualizing the scenes than I, but I just put on my virtual-reading mentality and soon was able to participate. This story of identity, self-acceptance, acceptance of others, belonging, and building relationships will appeal to all middle-grade readers.
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Four seventh graders attending Virtual Reality School for difference reasons, and a story told from four points of view.
Hunter, popular, good looking, lacrosse star, and “the guy that all the girls liked” has Alopecia and is starting to bald in spots. For school he designs his avatar to look just like him, wearing his lacrosse shirt, with still-flowing blond hair.
Edelsabeth Dahan-Miller is enrolled in VR school by her mother who thinks she may be too obsessed with her looks, fashion, and appearing in the top three on Parker’s website which ranks the cuteness of the girls in school. She also could be mean to others and judgmental, and her mother wants her to just be happy and learn that she is worth knowing “No matter how you look.” Her mother requires Edelle to design her avatar as simple, just her with no high fashion or makeup. She actually goes more basic and, embarrassed, changes her avatar’s name to Vanya.
Bradley Horvath is a big, awkward guy who loves to dance and has been bullied and made fun of since third grade. He is delighted to go to a virtual school and reinvent himself; with the approval of his parents, he designs his avatar with a totally new look—tall, square-jawed, with pink hair and fashionable clothes—and a new name, Daebak.
Last year Hunter, Edelle, and Bradley attended the same middle school where Edelle and Hunter were good friends who flirted, and where Bradley made fun of Bradley and, as she rose in popularity, Edelle ignored Bradley. Of course, only Edelle/Vanya and Bradley/Daebak recognize Hunter.
At school orientation Hunter comes into direct competition shooting baskets with a boy in a yellow tracksuit. As the three much later learn, Jasper, who has become their teammate and coach in the school’s VR Games competition and friend, has cystic fibrosis.
As the four become more involved with each other, new friends, and the school, a last new team member is Keiko who appears not to want to make friends or participate in really anything as she answers every query or comment with “Whatever.” The four feel they want to bring her out of her shell especially Vanya who designs a school dance section for those uncomfortable with traditional school dances.
Readers will enjoy getting to know these characters and following their interactions and growing friendship as they navigate VR school, their new identities, and the lessons they learn through their experiences. And what occurs when disaster strikes at the school dance, leading to a in-person meet.
I was mesmerized as I read Chad Morris and Shelly Brown’s novel. Not familiar with virtual reality in the least, young readers may be more adept visualizing the scenes than I, but I just put on my virtual-reading mentality and soon was able to participate. This story of identity, self-acceptance, acceptance of others, belonging, and building relationships will appeal to all middle-grade readers.
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Redwood and Ponytail by K.A. Holt
Tam (Redwood) and Kate (Ponytail) come from two different worlds.
Kate’s mom puts helicopter parents to shame. She has orchestrated Kate’s entire life so that in 7th grade she will become cheer captain and she will follow her mother’s life—unlike her much older sister who joined the Navy at 18. She lives in the perfect house, which is always being perfected, and her daughter certainly isn’t gay.
Tam’s mother is the opposite. Open and accepting and prone to trying out the adolescent lingo (and providing many of the laughs in reading this book). Tam is also looked after by neighbor Frankie and her wife. Frankie, it appears, is full of advice, based on experience trying to fit the stereotype. Tam is an athlete, tall as a redwood, ace volleyball player, who everyone high-five’s in the hallway, but she realizes she only has one good friend, Levy.
On the first day of school, Tam and Kate meet and, as they quickly, mysteriously, develop deep feelings for each other, they find each not only different from the stereotypes everyone assumes, but, opposite though they seem, opposite though their lives and families may be they each discover they may be a little different than they thought they were and more alike than they thought. Does Kate actually want to be cheer captain or would she rather run free in the team’s mascot’s costume? Does she really want to have lunch at her same old table or would she rather sit with Tam and Levy which is much more fun? Does Tam really want to beat Kate for the school presidency? Or is she punishing Kate for not being able to admit what their friendship may be?
As their relationship experiences ups and downs, and they each try to define their attraction, they also find that others may not be as critical and narrow-minded as they assumed.
Written in my favorite format, free verse with some rhymes thrown in for rhythm, the author takes the form to another level with parallel lines and two-voice poetry. I would suggest that the reader have some experience with verse novels before reading.
Readers will also love the Greek chorus—Alex, Alyx, Alexx—who comment on the action and keeps it moving along.
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Tam (Redwood) and Kate (Ponytail) come from two different worlds.
Kate’s mom puts helicopter parents to shame. She has orchestrated Kate’s entire life so that in 7th grade she will become cheer captain and she will follow her mother’s life—unlike her much older sister who joined the Navy at 18. She lives in the perfect house, which is always being perfected, and her daughter certainly isn’t gay.
Tam’s mother is the opposite. Open and accepting and prone to trying out the adolescent lingo (and providing many of the laughs in reading this book). Tam is also looked after by neighbor Frankie and her wife. Frankie, it appears, is full of advice, based on experience trying to fit the stereotype. Tam is an athlete, tall as a redwood, ace volleyball player, who everyone high-five’s in the hallway, but she realizes she only has one good friend, Levy.
On the first day of school, Tam and Kate meet and, as they quickly, mysteriously, develop deep feelings for each other, they find each not only different from the stereotypes everyone assumes, but, opposite though they seem, opposite though their lives and families may be they each discover they may be a little different than they thought they were and more alike than they thought. Does Kate actually want to be cheer captain or would she rather run free in the team’s mascot’s costume? Does she really want to have lunch at her same old table or would she rather sit with Tam and Levy which is much more fun? Does Tam really want to beat Kate for the school presidency? Or is she punishing Kate for not being able to admit what their friendship may be?
As their relationship experiences ups and downs, and they each try to define their attraction, they also find that others may not be as critical and narrow-minded as they assumed.
Written in my favorite format, free verse with some rhymes thrown in for rhythm, the author takes the form to another level with parallel lines and two-voice poetry. I would suggest that the reader have some experience with verse novels before reading.
Readers will also love the Greek chorus—Alex, Alyx, Alexx—who comment on the action and keeps it moving along.
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Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Eleanor & Park is a true teen love, not lust, story.
Readers will fall in love with misfits Eleanor and Park as they fall in love with each other amidst a host of challenges, such as Eleanor's poverty, dysfunctional family, abusive stepfather, and school bullies (especially the mean girls). Park, on the other hand, has money and a loving family, but he is not fulfilling his father's expectations of what a boy should be.
But with Park's love for her, Eleanor gains the strength to believe in herself and do what she needs to do—for both of them. Set in 1986 over one high school year, their story illustrates the feelings of first love.
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Eleanor & Park is a true teen love, not lust, story.
Readers will fall in love with misfits Eleanor and Park as they fall in love with each other amidst a host of challenges, such as Eleanor's poverty, dysfunctional family, abusive stepfather, and school bullies (especially the mean girls). Park, on the other hand, has money and a loving family, but he is not fulfilling his father's expectations of what a boy should be.
But with Park's love for her, Eleanor gains the strength to believe in herself and do what she needs to do—for both of them. Set in 1986 over one high school year, their story illustrates the feelings of first love.
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The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten
The novel's “hero” is fourteen-year-old Adam Spencer Ross who is a member of a Young Adult OCD Support Group.
When he meets and instantly falls in love with the newest member, Robyn Plummer, recently released from a residential facility, he decides he will get better, save Robyn, and become the super hero that he has chosen as his group identity.
Complicating this, Adam has two families: one comprised of a detached father, a loving stepmother; and an anxiety-filled young half-brother and the other is his mother who is a hoarder with additional mental health issues. Adam tries navigating his world, suppressing his OCD, working with his therapist, and helping those around him.
Adam’s story highlights the importance of family, friendship, and hope in the treatment of mental illness.
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The novel's “hero” is fourteen-year-old Adam Spencer Ross who is a member of a Young Adult OCD Support Group.
When he meets and instantly falls in love with the newest member, Robyn Plummer, recently released from a residential facility, he decides he will get better, save Robyn, and become the super hero that he has chosen as his group identity.
Complicating this, Adam has two families: one comprised of a detached father, a loving stepmother; and an anxiety-filled young half-brother and the other is his mother who is a hoarder with additional mental health issues. Adam tries navigating his world, suppressing his OCD, working with his therapist, and helping those around him.
Adam’s story highlights the importance of family, friendship, and hope in the treatment of mental illness.
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Forget Me Not by Carolee Dean
This is one of my favorite verse novels, not only for the story line, which will generate important conversations among teens about cyberbullying, shaming, and suicide, but for the format. Dean creatively employs a variety of poetic forms—villanelle, pantoum, cinquain, tanka, shape poems—and meter, as well as script writing to identify the characters and alter the mood of the plot so subtly and artistically as to not disrupt the reading and the reader.
In response to a compromising photo of her that is texted throughout her high school and the resulting shaming by her peers, Ally commits suicide —or so she thinks—as her only way out. A friend tries to save her by showing her that her life has value and that she can make the decision to live.
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This is one of my favorite verse novels, not only for the story line, which will generate important conversations among teens about cyberbullying, shaming, and suicide, but for the format. Dean creatively employs a variety of poetic forms—villanelle, pantoum, cinquain, tanka, shape poems—and meter, as well as script writing to identify the characters and alter the mood of the plot so subtly and artistically as to not disrupt the reading and the reader.
In response to a compromising photo of her that is texted throughout her high school and the resulting shaming by her peers, Ally commits suicide —or so she thinks—as her only way out. A friend tries to save her by showing her that her life has value and that she can make the decision to live.
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Torch by Lyn Miller-Lachmann
“THEY had all the power. There was no such thing as fairness in their world.” (ARC, 19)
There is so much world history of which many of us, especially our adolescent readers, are unaware. Novelists, such as Lyn Miller-Lachmann, can teach us this history while making it come alive, putting human faces on the many who dies and survived during this time.
On August 21, 1968, the Soviet Union and three other Communist regimes—Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria—invaded Czechoslovakia. The new wave of repression that followed saw the withdrawal of freedoms, mass firings, expulsions from the Party, the imprisonment of dissidents, and the closing of the borders. (Author’s Note)
Taking place from December 1968 to Summer 1969, Torch is a story of not only a time in history but resilience, freedoms, resistance, creativity, family, and, above all, friendship.
When Pavol finds his dreams of attending university in Prague have been ended by the Party, and he faces a life in the mines that killed his father, he and his friends Stepan and Tomas write a letter to be delivered to the castle in Prague. When he and Stepan are stopped and sent away, Pavol follows the example of martyr Jan Palach and sets himself on fire, a human torch.
Readers see how not only the increasing restrictive and punitive government’s actions but also Pavol’s actions affect his pregnant girlfriend Lydia; Ondrej, her father, a WWII freedom fighter; his friends Stepan and Tomas; and his mother and three younger sisters.
“Pavol’s death hadn’t changed anything. One by one, the reformers in the government had been fired and replaced, not even a figurehead remaining. Every proclamation announced ‘normalization’: the return to dictatorship. The censorship was tighter than ever.” (161)
Stepan, a former bully who had been transformed through his friendship with—and maybe a crush on—the kind Pavol, is the star player of his high school hockey team and dreams of a hockey scholarship and eventually the Olympics, but lets the poetry and life of Walt Whitman guide him. Instead of moving toward his goals, he is beaten, arrested, imprisoned, and finally sent to work for the State in the worst conditions.
Tomas, always socially awkward—“He was so much better with problem sets and the grammar of foreign languages than with people (31), Pavol was his first real friend. Tomas’ father, Comrade Kuchar, was high in the Party and sent his son to youth leadership classes and camp, calling him “antisocial” and threatening to send him to a mental hospital when he turned 18.
Lydia lived in the woods with her father who moved them frequently and in the middle of the night; she worked in the shoe factory without much hope for a future until she fell in love with Pavol giving her hopes to live in Prague and her own chance to finish her education. After his death, she found she was pregnant with his child which gives her even less opportunities. When she finds out that her father is dying, she plans an escape to Austria, hoping to encourage Stepan and even Tomas to join her.
These characters became real and got under my skin as I returned to them each day of reading, feeling their pain and frustrations and cheering any victories. One reason is that they formed unlikely bonds with each other as they began trying to cheer each other on to lives with freedoms. This novel belongs in high school World History classes to expand our knowledge of the people in our world.
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“THEY had all the power. There was no such thing as fairness in their world.” (ARC, 19)
There is so much world history of which many of us, especially our adolescent readers, are unaware. Novelists, such as Lyn Miller-Lachmann, can teach us this history while making it come alive, putting human faces on the many who dies and survived during this time.
On August 21, 1968, the Soviet Union and three other Communist regimes—Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria—invaded Czechoslovakia. The new wave of repression that followed saw the withdrawal of freedoms, mass firings, expulsions from the Party, the imprisonment of dissidents, and the closing of the borders. (Author’s Note)
Taking place from December 1968 to Summer 1969, Torch is a story of not only a time in history but resilience, freedoms, resistance, creativity, family, and, above all, friendship.
When Pavol finds his dreams of attending university in Prague have been ended by the Party, and he faces a life in the mines that killed his father, he and his friends Stepan and Tomas write a letter to be delivered to the castle in Prague. When he and Stepan are stopped and sent away, Pavol follows the example of martyr Jan Palach and sets himself on fire, a human torch.
Readers see how not only the increasing restrictive and punitive government’s actions but also Pavol’s actions affect his pregnant girlfriend Lydia; Ondrej, her father, a WWII freedom fighter; his friends Stepan and Tomas; and his mother and three younger sisters.
“Pavol’s death hadn’t changed anything. One by one, the reformers in the government had been fired and replaced, not even a figurehead remaining. Every proclamation announced ‘normalization’: the return to dictatorship. The censorship was tighter than ever.” (161)
Stepan, a former bully who had been transformed through his friendship with—and maybe a crush on—the kind Pavol, is the star player of his high school hockey team and dreams of a hockey scholarship and eventually the Olympics, but lets the poetry and life of Walt Whitman guide him. Instead of moving toward his goals, he is beaten, arrested, imprisoned, and finally sent to work for the State in the worst conditions.
Tomas, always socially awkward—“He was so much better with problem sets and the grammar of foreign languages than with people (31), Pavol was his first real friend. Tomas’ father, Comrade Kuchar, was high in the Party and sent his son to youth leadership classes and camp, calling him “antisocial” and threatening to send him to a mental hospital when he turned 18.
Lydia lived in the woods with her father who moved them frequently and in the middle of the night; she worked in the shoe factory without much hope for a future until she fell in love with Pavol giving her hopes to live in Prague and her own chance to finish her education. After his death, she found she was pregnant with his child which gives her even less opportunities. When she finds out that her father is dying, she plans an escape to Austria, hoping to encourage Stepan and even Tomas to join her.
These characters became real and got under my skin as I returned to them each day of reading, feeling their pain and frustrations and cheering any victories. One reason is that they formed unlikely bonds with each other as they began trying to cheer each other on to lives with freedoms. This novel belongs in high school World History classes to expand our knowledge of the people in our world.
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We Are All We Have by Marina Budhos
There are an estimated 5.5 million children with at least one undocumented parent, 4.5 million of whom were born here, making them U.S. citizens (American Psychological Association). Nearly 130,000 migrant children entered the U.S. government's shelter system in fiscal year 2022. Historically, the vast majority of minors received by the agency are migrant teenagers who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents or legal guardians (CBS News). Each of their stories are different but have the same effects. The harmful material, physical and mental health consequences of the mere threat of deportation leave already vulnerable children of undocumented parents even further marginalized (American Psychological Association). Immigration enforcement—and the threat of enforcement—can negatively impact a child’s long-term health and development (American Immigration Council).
“Sometimes you think your life story is a straight line, a road humming forward. Maybe Ammi thought her story was a clear way ahead. She went to the best schools. She had a family, fancy clothes, a spot at a university. A big wedding and husband.
Me too. I thought Fatima and I were the same.
I thought my biggest problem was Ammi trying to be me.
I thought I got my height from Abu.
I was so focused on what was ahead, that I didn’t understand what was behind me. It was too complicated. It didn’t make a clean story.
What good is a story if you don’t know all the parts?” (215)
Seventeen-year-old Rania came with her pregnant mother from Pakistan when she was a child. They were seeking asylum, ostensibly fleeing threats from those who killed her father, a journalist. Her younger brother Kamal was born an American citizen.
When her mother is arrested by ICE and sent to a detention facility, Raina’s life—her plans for hanging out with best friend Fatima, working in a book store, getting ready for college—come to a screeching halt. Not yet 18 and without an adult to take custody of them, Raina and Kamal are sent to a shelter, and Raina learns that her mother has been lying to her about the status of their appeal, her Pakistani family, who her father is, and the reason they fled to the United States. And she has no proof that their lives in Pakistan were in danger.
“What hurts more: That they want us to leave? Or that my mother lied to me? (30)
“It’s like everything I’ve understood about us, our situation, has widened into this huge movie screen. It’s not just me and Kamal. Or Ammi [in detention] in Pennsylvania. Something bigger is going on: the white tents we’ve seen on the news; the shifting lines; the children sleeping curled on concrete floors; and now here [in the shelter], covering their faces. We are disappearing, into the holes and crevices of this country.” (85)
Carlos was one of the thousands of undocumented, unaccompanied teens who crossed the border on his own, fleeing gang violence, and ended up in a shelter, facing deportation when he turns 18.
When Rania and Carlos meet, they take to the road with Kamal, first to find the uncle that Rania didn’t not know she had, and, when he refuses guardianship, to disappear. They shelter in a motel for teen summer workers where they earn money and the people look after them and when it is necessary to leave, Lidia finds them a temporary sanctuary in a synagogue in Vermont where Carlos realizes that their only chances are for him to cross to Canada and for Rania and Kamal to return “home” to help their mother prove her case with Rania’s newly-awakened memories of their life in Pakistan.
The heart of the story is Rania and Carlos’ relationship, both proud, independent teenagers who support and accept help from each other while providing Kamal with the childhood that they missed.
This is an essential YA read, showing multiple sides of the immigration-refugee situation, and should be read by all teens, including teachers, as many of these children and adolescents are hiding in plain sight in our classrooms. As Lidia, Rania’s mother’s lawyer, says, “The rules keep changing. I’ve got long-term clients in detention. I’ve got grandmothers put on airplanes without saying goodbye. People with job offers unable to get here. Everyday it’s another story. Your mother’s story is just one of them.” (69)
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There are an estimated 5.5 million children with at least one undocumented parent, 4.5 million of whom were born here, making them U.S. citizens (American Psychological Association). Nearly 130,000 migrant children entered the U.S. government's shelter system in fiscal year 2022. Historically, the vast majority of minors received by the agency are migrant teenagers who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents or legal guardians (CBS News). Each of their stories are different but have the same effects. The harmful material, physical and mental health consequences of the mere threat of deportation leave already vulnerable children of undocumented parents even further marginalized (American Psychological Association). Immigration enforcement—and the threat of enforcement—can negatively impact a child’s long-term health and development (American Immigration Council).
“Sometimes you think your life story is a straight line, a road humming forward. Maybe Ammi thought her story was a clear way ahead. She went to the best schools. She had a family, fancy clothes, a spot at a university. A big wedding and husband.
Me too. I thought Fatima and I were the same.
I thought my biggest problem was Ammi trying to be me.
I thought I got my height from Abu.
I was so focused on what was ahead, that I didn’t understand what was behind me. It was too complicated. It didn’t make a clean story.
What good is a story if you don’t know all the parts?” (215)
Seventeen-year-old Rania came with her pregnant mother from Pakistan when she was a child. They were seeking asylum, ostensibly fleeing threats from those who killed her father, a journalist. Her younger brother Kamal was born an American citizen.
When her mother is arrested by ICE and sent to a detention facility, Raina’s life—her plans for hanging out with best friend Fatima, working in a book store, getting ready for college—come to a screeching halt. Not yet 18 and without an adult to take custody of them, Raina and Kamal are sent to a shelter, and Raina learns that her mother has been lying to her about the status of their appeal, her Pakistani family, who her father is, and the reason they fled to the United States. And she has no proof that their lives in Pakistan were in danger.
“What hurts more: That they want us to leave? Or that my mother lied to me? (30)
“It’s like everything I’ve understood about us, our situation, has widened into this huge movie screen. It’s not just me and Kamal. Or Ammi [in detention] in Pennsylvania. Something bigger is going on: the white tents we’ve seen on the news; the shifting lines; the children sleeping curled on concrete floors; and now here [in the shelter], covering their faces. We are disappearing, into the holes and crevices of this country.” (85)
Carlos was one of the thousands of undocumented, unaccompanied teens who crossed the border on his own, fleeing gang violence, and ended up in a shelter, facing deportation when he turns 18.
When Rania and Carlos meet, they take to the road with Kamal, first to find the uncle that Rania didn’t not know she had, and, when he refuses guardianship, to disappear. They shelter in a motel for teen summer workers where they earn money and the people look after them and when it is necessary to leave, Lidia finds them a temporary sanctuary in a synagogue in Vermont where Carlos realizes that their only chances are for him to cross to Canada and for Rania and Kamal to return “home” to help their mother prove her case with Rania’s newly-awakened memories of their life in Pakistan.
The heart of the story is Rania and Carlos’ relationship, both proud, independent teenagers who support and accept help from each other while providing Kamal with the childhood that they missed.
This is an essential YA read, showing multiple sides of the immigration-refugee situation, and should be read by all teens, including teachers, as many of these children and adolescents are hiding in plain sight in our classrooms. As Lidia, Rania’s mother’s lawyer, says, “The rules keep changing. I’ve got long-term clients in detention. I’ve got grandmothers put on airplanes without saying goodbye. People with job offers unable to get here. Everyday it’s another story. Your mother’s story is just one of them.” (69)
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Keeping Pace by Laurie Morrison
“Mistakes are proof that you need to improve,…. But maybe mistakes are just…unavoidable. Sometimes we hurt people’s feelings on purpose. Sometimes we hurt people’s feeling by accident. Sometimes we have no idea we’re hurting someone’s feelings until the harm is done, and then we have no idea how to fix it what we’ve messed up. Maybe I’m a slow learner, when it comes to stuff like this.” (ARC, 228)
Just in time for Valentine Day (although not published until April 2024), a story of first love (or at least a first crush) and learning self-awareness and self-love.
Grace has to be perfect, like winning Top Scholar, and the one person keeping her from her goal is her former best friend Jonah. Grace and Jonah used to be inseparable, but after his father died and he came back from private school to Grace’s school, something changed and he no longer wanted to be friends, despite the fact that her friends and sister think she is obsessed with him, and his friends—even his ex-girlfriend—think he is obsessed with Grace.
After she loses 8th grade Top Scholar to Jonah by ½ point, Grace has to come up with new goals for the summer. She makes a list (which seems to be a favorite strategy). One item added by her best-friend-cousin-“twin” is making a new friend, and one she adds is beating Jonah in a half-marathon that he was to run with his father.
As she is forced to try new things, Grace does make a new friend, learns to become a better friend to those she has, realizes that sometimes you can see things from different perspectives, is forced to be flexible and change plans, and discovers that winning may not be more important than having fun—and friend and family relationships. “The contest is important to me.” “More important than Jonah?” I shake my head. “I shouldn’t have to choose!”
In the midst of this, she is dealing with her divorced father and his expectations (ambition at all costs) and his new girlfriend and fitting in with her mother and sister (“two peas in a pod”). In other words, all the angst of young adolescence.
But through these trials and mistakes, she learns. “…I’m starting to think that success isn’t just one thing…. Maybe we only appreciate success after setbacks. Maybe we only understand what it means to achieve after we’ve failed. But maybe there’s that optical illusion effect, too. You look at something from one angle, and it’s not so impressive. You look at it from a slightly different perspective, and it is.” (ARC, 270)
A story of relationships, loss, identity, a first kiss—and pace (“rate of progress” www.merriam-webster.com)
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“Mistakes are proof that you need to improve,…. But maybe mistakes are just…unavoidable. Sometimes we hurt people’s feelings on purpose. Sometimes we hurt people’s feeling by accident. Sometimes we have no idea we’re hurting someone’s feelings until the harm is done, and then we have no idea how to fix it what we’ve messed up. Maybe I’m a slow learner, when it comes to stuff like this.” (ARC, 228)
Just in time for Valentine Day (although not published until April 2024), a story of first love (or at least a first crush) and learning self-awareness and self-love.
Grace has to be perfect, like winning Top Scholar, and the one person keeping her from her goal is her former best friend Jonah. Grace and Jonah used to be inseparable, but after his father died and he came back from private school to Grace’s school, something changed and he no longer wanted to be friends, despite the fact that her friends and sister think she is obsessed with him, and his friends—even his ex-girlfriend—think he is obsessed with Grace.
After she loses 8th grade Top Scholar to Jonah by ½ point, Grace has to come up with new goals for the summer. She makes a list (which seems to be a favorite strategy). One item added by her best-friend-cousin-“twin” is making a new friend, and one she adds is beating Jonah in a half-marathon that he was to run with his father.
As she is forced to try new things, Grace does make a new friend, learns to become a better friend to those she has, realizes that sometimes you can see things from different perspectives, is forced to be flexible and change plans, and discovers that winning may not be more important than having fun—and friend and family relationships. “The contest is important to me.” “More important than Jonah?” I shake my head. “I shouldn’t have to choose!”
In the midst of this, she is dealing with her divorced father and his expectations (ambition at all costs) and his new girlfriend and fitting in with her mother and sister (“two peas in a pod”). In other words, all the angst of young adolescence.
But through these trials and mistakes, she learns. “…I’m starting to think that success isn’t just one thing…. Maybe we only appreciate success after setbacks. Maybe we only understand what it means to achieve after we’ve failed. But maybe there’s that optical illusion effect, too. You look at something from one angle, and it’s not so impressive. You look at it from a slightly different perspective, and it is.” (ARC, 270)
A story of relationships, loss, identity, a first kiss—and pace (“rate of progress” www.merriam-webster.com)
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Free Throws, Friendships, and Other Things We Fouled Up by Jenn Bishop
FREE THROWS, FRIENDSHIP AND OTHER THINGS WE FOULED UP is about basketball, will be loved by sports lovers, and non-players will learn a whole new vocabulary, but this is primarily a story about friendships—how they are built, how they can just as easily be destroyed, and how they can be restored.
Rory’s father has just secured the position as head coach of the University of Cincinnati. When she moves with him to the town where he grew up with his father the coach of the Bearcats when he was an adolescent, Rory is sure that this is her last basketball move and that she can finally make a friend who is not just a teammate. One problem is that her school is on the East Side, home of Xavier University, the arch-rivals.
On her first day of school, she meets Abby, and, as different as they are, they become instant friends. Rory hasn’t lived anywhere long enough to make a best friend, and last year Abby found out that her former basketball teammate was not a true friend. “’Bestie.’ When she says it out loud, it hits me. Half an hour ago when I said it to that woman? That was the first time I said it out loud.” (160)
However not only is Abby’s father coach of Xavier’s basketball team, he has some freud with the Marches—father and son—and will not allow her to have anything to do with Rory. “You know what, Ab? If you’re smart, you’ll stay as far away from any offspring of Nick March as you can. That family is bad news.” (35) When the girls investigate, they find out their fathers were best friends through 7th grade but then something happened, something that has kept them as enemies even now.
Rory and Abby are determined to find out what happened and through it meet their fathers’ middle school coach, Sister Louisa who, unbeknownst to Rory, helps Abby regain her faith that she can play basketball and helps her decide to apply to the Catholic high school on the West Side, leading to keeping secrets from Rory. As Rory starts basketball season and Abby seems to push her to the basketball girls, they grow apart.
However, when, thanks to Abby’s new boyfriend basketball-player Dontrell and Sister Louisa, they save their friendship, they can now help their fathers to regain theirs.
This is an important novel, filled with diverse, engaging characters from Abby and Rory to Abby’s mother, an MFA student at Yale, and Grandfather Coach March’s girlfriend Judy that will help adolescents navigate peer relationship and changing, family relationships and will entice those who play or watch sports
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FREE THROWS, FRIENDSHIP AND OTHER THINGS WE FOULED UP is about basketball, will be loved by sports lovers, and non-players will learn a whole new vocabulary, but this is primarily a story about friendships—how they are built, how they can just as easily be destroyed, and how they can be restored.
Rory’s father has just secured the position as head coach of the University of Cincinnati. When she moves with him to the town where he grew up with his father the coach of the Bearcats when he was an adolescent, Rory is sure that this is her last basketball move and that she can finally make a friend who is not just a teammate. One problem is that her school is on the East Side, home of Xavier University, the arch-rivals.
On her first day of school, she meets Abby, and, as different as they are, they become instant friends. Rory hasn’t lived anywhere long enough to make a best friend, and last year Abby found out that her former basketball teammate was not a true friend. “’Bestie.’ When she says it out loud, it hits me. Half an hour ago when I said it to that woman? That was the first time I said it out loud.” (160)
However not only is Abby’s father coach of Xavier’s basketball team, he has some freud with the Marches—father and son—and will not allow her to have anything to do with Rory. “You know what, Ab? If you’re smart, you’ll stay as far away from any offspring of Nick March as you can. That family is bad news.” (35) When the girls investigate, they find out their fathers were best friends through 7th grade but then something happened, something that has kept them as enemies even now.
Rory and Abby are determined to find out what happened and through it meet their fathers’ middle school coach, Sister Louisa who, unbeknownst to Rory, helps Abby regain her faith that she can play basketball and helps her decide to apply to the Catholic high school on the West Side, leading to keeping secrets from Rory. As Rory starts basketball season and Abby seems to push her to the basketball girls, they grow apart.
However, when, thanks to Abby’s new boyfriend basketball-player Dontrell and Sister Louisa, they save their friendship, they can now help their fathers to regain theirs.
This is an important novel, filled with diverse, engaging characters from Abby and Rory to Abby’s mother, an MFA student at Yale, and Grandfather Coach March’s girlfriend Judy that will help adolescents navigate peer relationship and changing, family relationships and will entice those who play or watch sports
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Refugees by Catherine Stine.
Dawn is a foster teen who runs away to New York City and becomes affected by the events of 9/11. As she plays her flute on the streets near Ground Zero to earn money for food, she is approached by families of victims who ask her to play for them and the memories of their loved ones. As Dawn comes to believe this is her mission, she teaches herself music she feels appropriate for those of many cultures and stages of life. In doing so, she opens up to strangers and new friends, something she couldn't do with her foster mother.
Johar is an Afghani teenager, weaver, and poet. His father is killed by the Taliban, his mother is killed by a land mine, his older brother joins the Taliban, and his aunt is missing, leaving Johar to care for his three-year-old cousin. He and his cousin flee to a refugee camp in Pakistan where he works for the Red Cross doctor, Dawn's foster mother, another person who must learn to show love.
Dawn and Johar connect, and form a relationship, through phone calls and emails, and as they all work toward forming a family—one that spans the globe—the reader learns how war, the U.S. involvement, and the events of 9/11 affected those in many countries. This would be a book I would recommend for proficient readers with an interest in war or history. Refugees adds another dimension to the 9/11 novels.
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Dawn is a foster teen who runs away to New York City and becomes affected by the events of 9/11. As she plays her flute on the streets near Ground Zero to earn money for food, she is approached by families of victims who ask her to play for them and the memories of their loved ones. As Dawn comes to believe this is her mission, she teaches herself music she feels appropriate for those of many cultures and stages of life. In doing so, she opens up to strangers and new friends, something she couldn't do with her foster mother.
Johar is an Afghani teenager, weaver, and poet. His father is killed by the Taliban, his mother is killed by a land mine, his older brother joins the Taliban, and his aunt is missing, leaving Johar to care for his three-year-old cousin. He and his cousin flee to a refugee camp in Pakistan where he works for the Red Cross doctor, Dawn's foster mother, another person who must learn to show love.
Dawn and Johar connect, and form a relationship, through phone calls and emails, and as they all work toward forming a family—one that spans the globe—the reader learns how war, the U.S. involvement, and the events of 9/11 affected those in many countries. This would be a book I would recommend for proficient readers with an interest in war or history. Refugees adds another dimension to the 9/11 novels.
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Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
This novel introduced me to a new favorite character, Aza, whose name takes her through the alphabet and back again.
Aza suffers from debilitating anxiety. Green, through Aza, is very effective at describing her condition to the readers, the way it spirals out of control, controlling her life as she tries to figure out who her “self” is. “I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.” And as much as Aza tries to control herself and her relationships, her thoughts take over, sometimes rendering her helpless, other times dictating her actions. Her thoughts intrude in her relationship with her new boyfriend Miles and almost derail her relationship with her best friend.
The plot involves a mystery, but I saw that more as a vehicle for the characters’ evolving relationships as they all—Aza, Daisy, Miles and his brother Noah—explore the world, face loss, and navigate relationships with parents and friends. “…the world is also the stories we tell about it” and John Green helps readers understand the complexities of life—especially life with loss and mental illness—in a novel I didn’t want to end.
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This novel introduced me to a new favorite character, Aza, whose name takes her through the alphabet and back again.
Aza suffers from debilitating anxiety. Green, through Aza, is very effective at describing her condition to the readers, the way it spirals out of control, controlling her life as she tries to figure out who her “self” is. “I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.” And as much as Aza tries to control herself and her relationships, her thoughts take over, sometimes rendering her helpless, other times dictating her actions. Her thoughts intrude in her relationship with her new boyfriend Miles and almost derail her relationship with her best friend.
The plot involves a mystery, but I saw that more as a vehicle for the characters’ evolving relationships as they all—Aza, Daisy, Miles and his brother Noah—explore the world, face loss, and navigate relationships with parents and friends. “…the world is also the stories we tell about it” and John Green helps readers understand the complexities of life—especially life with loss and mental illness—in a novel I didn’t want to end.
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The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner
The first 9/11 novel I read, The Memory of Things is lovely story about the effects of the events of 9/11. Another reason we read is to understand events we have not experienced and the effect of those events on others who may be like ourselves.
After witnessing the fall of the first Twin Towers on 9-11 and evacuating his school, teenager Kyle Donahue, a student at Stuyvesant High School, discovers a girl who is covered in ash on the Brooklyn Bridge; she has no memory of who she is. The son of a detective, he takes her home to help her rediscover who she is, why she was where she was, what she was doing there, and her connection to the events.
Author Gae Polisner wrote The Memory of Things in alternating narratives—Kyle's in prose, the girl writes in free verse—the two characters sharing their stories and perspectives, introducing adolescent readers, many of whom had were not alive during 9/11, to the effects of this tragedy in their own ways.
In an interview about why she wrote this novel, author Gae Polisner said, "After 9/11, and pretty much for the first time in my life, I was having a hard time coping. I had young children at home and suddenly didn't feel our world or country was safe for them anymore. Of course, in my earliest childhood, I was raised against a backdrop of, and always well aware of, war as my father was a young M.A.S.H. surgeon in Viet Nam, gone for a whole year. But beyond that, my childhood had felt safe and our country was in a peaceful and prosperous period where it -- we -- all felt pretty invincible. Until 9/11. For weeks after, then months, that stretched closer to a year, I felt scared and off balance. Living under an hour from my beloved NYC (where I had lived pre-children), I didn't want to go in, ride over the bridges, visit landmarks I had loved. I was searching for ways to cope, and my brain started telling me to write about it. Write it out in story, with characters who are resilient and figure out how to rise against the immediate backdrop of destruction and despair. And so were born Kyle and the bird girl. Only typing this answer now does the "bird rising" connection even come to me."
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The first 9/11 novel I read, The Memory of Things is lovely story about the effects of the events of 9/11. Another reason we read is to understand events we have not experienced and the effect of those events on others who may be like ourselves.
After witnessing the fall of the first Twin Towers on 9-11 and evacuating his school, teenager Kyle Donahue, a student at Stuyvesant High School, discovers a girl who is covered in ash on the Brooklyn Bridge; she has no memory of who she is. The son of a detective, he takes her home to help her rediscover who she is, why she was where she was, what she was doing there, and her connection to the events.
Author Gae Polisner wrote The Memory of Things in alternating narratives—Kyle's in prose, the girl writes in free verse—the two characters sharing their stories and perspectives, introducing adolescent readers, many of whom had were not alive during 9/11, to the effects of this tragedy in their own ways.
In an interview about why she wrote this novel, author Gae Polisner said, "After 9/11, and pretty much for the first time in my life, I was having a hard time coping. I had young children at home and suddenly didn't feel our world or country was safe for them anymore. Of course, in my earliest childhood, I was raised against a backdrop of, and always well aware of, war as my father was a young M.A.S.H. surgeon in Viet Nam, gone for a whole year. But beyond that, my childhood had felt safe and our country was in a peaceful and prosperous period where it -- we -- all felt pretty invincible. Until 9/11. For weeks after, then months, that stretched closer to a year, I felt scared and off balance. Living under an hour from my beloved NYC (where I had lived pre-children), I didn't want to go in, ride over the bridges, visit landmarks I had loved. I was searching for ways to cope, and my brain started telling me to write about it. Write it out in story, with characters who are resilient and figure out how to rise against the immediate backdrop of destruction and despair. And so were born Kyle and the bird girl. Only typing this answer now does the "bird rising" connection even come to me."
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Love, Jacaranda by Alex Flinn
“I’ve been alive sixteen years, and this is the first time since my granny died that anyone has ever noticed me.” (10)
Jacaranda is a high school junior and works as a bagger at Publix in Florida. Her mother is in prison for attempted murder and, after her aunt refused to care for her, Jacaranda started going through the foster system. Her future goals are to graduate high school and possibly become a Publix manager one day. But as of now her goal is to get a solo in her high school spring concert.
When a customer asks her to sing, she sings the Publix jingle and is recorded by another customer. The video goes viral, and Jacaranda’s life changes. An anonymous benefactor sees the video and sponsors her to a prestigious arts school in Michigan where she realizes that her dreams can be much bigger.
The reader lives with Jackie, as she now calls herself, through her daily emails to her sponsor as she navigates her new world, taking nothing for granted—real meals, new clothes, friends who help her as she also helps them, mentors, visits to New York City, even jealous classmates, and ever-widening opportunities. She loves everything about her new life and doesn’t take anything for granted. “Do you know what I love most as MAA? You might think it’s the surroundings or the people or the opportunities. I love all those things. But the best thing is the predictability…. I didn’t have that type of predictability in foster care, and I sure didn’t have it with my mother.” (253)
And she even has a wealthy boyfriend—a wealthy, nice, compassionate boyfriend. But as she fits in and earns roles in the school musicals, Jackie constantly worries that Jarvis and her new friends will no longer accept her if they find out she is poor and her mother is in prison. “It was always so shameful being poor, even though it’s a matter of luck when you’re a kid.” (131) Jackie tries to keep her background and her mother’s situation a secret even as she meets a classmate who is brave enough to share her own past homelessness.
Reading Jacaranda’s story through her emails to her benefactor lets readers live through not only her linear story but learn about teachers, her past, and thoughts that may not be accessible in even a first person story narrative. It also allows for short read-alouds at the beginning of ending of a class period. Alex Flinn’s novel tells a story of poverty, acceptance, resilience, and relationships.
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“I’ve been alive sixteen years, and this is the first time since my granny died that anyone has ever noticed me.” (10)
Jacaranda is a high school junior and works as a bagger at Publix in Florida. Her mother is in prison for attempted murder and, after her aunt refused to care for her, Jacaranda started going through the foster system. Her future goals are to graduate high school and possibly become a Publix manager one day. But as of now her goal is to get a solo in her high school spring concert.
When a customer asks her to sing, she sings the Publix jingle and is recorded by another customer. The video goes viral, and Jacaranda’s life changes. An anonymous benefactor sees the video and sponsors her to a prestigious arts school in Michigan where she realizes that her dreams can be much bigger.
The reader lives with Jackie, as she now calls herself, through her daily emails to her sponsor as she navigates her new world, taking nothing for granted—real meals, new clothes, friends who help her as she also helps them, mentors, visits to New York City, even jealous classmates, and ever-widening opportunities. She loves everything about her new life and doesn’t take anything for granted. “Do you know what I love most as MAA? You might think it’s the surroundings or the people or the opportunities. I love all those things. But the best thing is the predictability…. I didn’t have that type of predictability in foster care, and I sure didn’t have it with my mother.” (253)
And she even has a wealthy boyfriend—a wealthy, nice, compassionate boyfriend. But as she fits in and earns roles in the school musicals, Jackie constantly worries that Jarvis and her new friends will no longer accept her if they find out she is poor and her mother is in prison. “It was always so shameful being poor, even though it’s a matter of luck when you’re a kid.” (131) Jackie tries to keep her background and her mother’s situation a secret even as she meets a classmate who is brave enough to share her own past homelessness.
Reading Jacaranda’s story through her emails to her benefactor lets readers live through not only her linear story but learn about teachers, her past, and thoughts that may not be accessible in even a first person story narrative. It also allows for short read-alouds at the beginning of ending of a class period. Alex Flinn’s novel tells a story of poverty, acceptance, resilience, and relationships.
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Hope and Other Punchlines by Julie Buxbaum
For many people the world is divided into Before and After, the dividing line being September 11, 2001. Such is the case for Abbi Hope Goldstein and Noah Stern.
On her first birthday Abbi was saved by a worker in her World Trade Center complex daycare center. As she is carried out, wearing a crown and holding a red balloon, the South Tower collapsing behind, a photographer takes the picture that has branded her Baby Hope, the symbol of resilience. Abbi spends her childhood and adolescence in relative fame; strangers hug and cry, share their stories with her, frame and hang the photograph in their homes, and news outlets hold “Where is Baby Hope Now” stories.
Noah was a baby in the hospital, fighting for his life, on 9/11 when his father went back to his office in the World Trade Center for his lucky hat, never to return home. He and his mother now live with her new husband and Noah is obsessed with comedy.
At age 15, Abbi is experiencing a suspicious cough, keeping it a secret from her parents and grandmother. Connie, the daycare worker, has recently died from cancer, most likely 9/11 syndrome, and Abbi takes a job as a camp counselor in a nearby town, looking for some anonymity and a chance at a “happily ever after” to the story that began with “Once upon a time” (9/11). Unfortunately, Noah, a fellow counselor, recognizes her and blackmails her into helping him interview the four other people in the iconic Baby Hope picture, convinced that the man in background wearing a Michigan cap is his father and also convinced, since his mother won’t talk about him, that his father chose not to come home after escaping from the Tower.
This is a novel about 9/11, one that presents yet more facets than many other 9/11 novels, such as 9/11 syndrome which is affecting many of those who were at Ground Zero, heroism and sacrifice, survivor guilt, and “[What] happens when the story you tell yourself turns out not to be your story at all.” (280)
This is primarily a novel about relationships—shifting relationships with family, friends, ex-friends, strangers, and romantic partners. I absolutely adored these characters—Noah and Abbi especially (and their evolving relationship) and Noah’s BFF Jack, Abbi’s divorced-but-best-friends-and-maybe-more parents, her grandmother who is experiencing the onset of dementia, and even Noah’s stepfather who learns to make jokes.
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For many people the world is divided into Before and After, the dividing line being September 11, 2001. Such is the case for Abbi Hope Goldstein and Noah Stern.
On her first birthday Abbi was saved by a worker in her World Trade Center complex daycare center. As she is carried out, wearing a crown and holding a red balloon, the South Tower collapsing behind, a photographer takes the picture that has branded her Baby Hope, the symbol of resilience. Abbi spends her childhood and adolescence in relative fame; strangers hug and cry, share their stories with her, frame and hang the photograph in their homes, and news outlets hold “Where is Baby Hope Now” stories.
Noah was a baby in the hospital, fighting for his life, on 9/11 when his father went back to his office in the World Trade Center for his lucky hat, never to return home. He and his mother now live with her new husband and Noah is obsessed with comedy.
At age 15, Abbi is experiencing a suspicious cough, keeping it a secret from her parents and grandmother. Connie, the daycare worker, has recently died from cancer, most likely 9/11 syndrome, and Abbi takes a job as a camp counselor in a nearby town, looking for some anonymity and a chance at a “happily ever after” to the story that began with “Once upon a time” (9/11). Unfortunately, Noah, a fellow counselor, recognizes her and blackmails her into helping him interview the four other people in the iconic Baby Hope picture, convinced that the man in background wearing a Michigan cap is his father and also convinced, since his mother won’t talk about him, that his father chose not to come home after escaping from the Tower.
This is a novel about 9/11, one that presents yet more facets than many other 9/11 novels, such as 9/11 syndrome which is affecting many of those who were at Ground Zero, heroism and sacrifice, survivor guilt, and “[What] happens when the story you tell yourself turns out not to be your story at all.” (280)
This is primarily a novel about relationships—shifting relationships with family, friends, ex-friends, strangers, and romantic partners. I absolutely adored these characters—Noah and Abbi especially (and their evolving relationship) and Noah’s BFF Jack, Abbi’s divorced-but-best-friends-and-maybe-more parents, her grandmother who is experiencing the onset of dementia, and even Noah’s stepfather who learns to make jokes.
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The Bridge by Bill Konigsberg
Two adolescents and two possible outcomes equals four possibilities.
Tillie and Aaron are New York City teenagers who are experiencing depression and despair. Even though they have never met, they both decide to jump off the George Washington Bridge coincidentally on the same day at the same time. The possibilities: Tillie jumps, Aaron sees her and lives; Aaron jumps, Tillie watches him and lives; both jump and both die; Aaron and Tillie see each other preparing to jump and meet, neither jumps, and both live.
This exquisitely-designed narrative shares all four scenarios as readers become progressively involved with the two characters, their families, and their friends and acquaintances. Even though readers are reading different permutations of the story, it is so well-crafted that there is little repetition as the stories develop.
As readers experience the world through Aaron’s and Tillie’s eyes, we learn about depression, suicidal ideation, and the immeasurable importance of connection with others. Readers perceive the effect of suicide on those involved in the lives of the victims and realize the significance of discussing feelings of despair and exploring alternatives to suicide.
“People are like that [the power of water] too. And love. Life-saving and life-taking, and it’s almost too much to navigate, that there’s this thing out there we need so much, that also hurts and destroys as it does.” (323)
Bill Konigsberg’s latest novel should be included all secondary school and classroom libraries and read in book clubs where readers can discuss in small groups. Even though Aaron and Tillie form a relationship in only one scenario, readers become aware of the power of, and need for, relationships.
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Two adolescents and two possible outcomes equals four possibilities.
Tillie and Aaron are New York City teenagers who are experiencing depression and despair. Even though they have never met, they both decide to jump off the George Washington Bridge coincidentally on the same day at the same time. The possibilities: Tillie jumps, Aaron sees her and lives; Aaron jumps, Tillie watches him and lives; both jump and both die; Aaron and Tillie see each other preparing to jump and meet, neither jumps, and both live.
This exquisitely-designed narrative shares all four scenarios as readers become progressively involved with the two characters, their families, and their friends and acquaintances. Even though readers are reading different permutations of the story, it is so well-crafted that there is little repetition as the stories develop.
As readers experience the world through Aaron’s and Tillie’s eyes, we learn about depression, suicidal ideation, and the immeasurable importance of connection with others. Readers perceive the effect of suicide on those involved in the lives of the victims and realize the significance of discussing feelings of despair and exploring alternatives to suicide.
“People are like that [the power of water] too. And love. Life-saving and life-taking, and it’s almost too much to navigate, that there’s this thing out there we need so much, that also hurts and destroys as it does.” (323)
Bill Konigsberg’s latest novel should be included all secondary school and classroom libraries and read in book clubs where readers can discuss in small groups. Even though Aaron and Tillie form a relationship in only one scenario, readers become aware of the power of, and need for, relationships.
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Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy
She is 6’3””; has blue hair; lives in a trailer with her father, pregnant unmarried sister, and now the undependable baby’s father; and works two jobs to help out. She is not a particularly good student and doesn’t have a lot of friends (although the ones she has are very tightknit and loyal—and very different); and has known she is gay since ninth grade. I can’t figure out what drew me to Ramona immediately, but I found myself looking forward to going back to the novel and unfolding her story every time I put the book down.
Ramona assumes she is stuck in Eulogy, Mississippi, a town that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina as was Ramona’s family. After the hurricane left, her mother left also, although she is still minimally involved in the girls’ lives. Now that her older, but less practical sister is pregnant, Ramona feels she will never be able to leave but she has come to accept her fate.
As the story opens Ramona is involved with Grace, a summer renter who has a boyfriend at home and has not yet labeled herself as gay. When they break up and Freddie, a childhood friend, moves back to town, Ramona is conflicted. She has feelings—strong feelings—for Freddie. “I’ve never wanted to touch a boy in the way I want to touch him. It makes me feel uncomfortable, but I’m starting to think that the gist of life is learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” (217)
And that is the lesson that Ramona, and the reader, learns from this story. By being with Freddie, “I’ve embraced another facet of myself. Life isn’t always written in the starts. Fate is mine to pen. I choose guys. I choose girls, I choose people. But most of all: I choose.” (280)
In addition, Freddie also has introduced Ramona to swimming, her ticket to community college and out of Eulogy. But can she take that step, used to thinking that everyone is dependent on her and she has no control of her future? Can Ramona choose the other aspects of her life? Through her various relationships explored in the past year, Ramona learns that even though, as a child, Freddie saw her as Peter Pan, she can “prepare to do what Peter never could.” She is the “captain” of her fate. (408)
Julie Murphy has given mature readers a story of resilience and the importance of controlling our choices.
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She is 6’3””; has blue hair; lives in a trailer with her father, pregnant unmarried sister, and now the undependable baby’s father; and works two jobs to help out. She is not a particularly good student and doesn’t have a lot of friends (although the ones she has are very tightknit and loyal—and very different); and has known she is gay since ninth grade. I can’t figure out what drew me to Ramona immediately, but I found myself looking forward to going back to the novel and unfolding her story every time I put the book down.
Ramona assumes she is stuck in Eulogy, Mississippi, a town that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina as was Ramona’s family. After the hurricane left, her mother left also, although she is still minimally involved in the girls’ lives. Now that her older, but less practical sister is pregnant, Ramona feels she will never be able to leave but she has come to accept her fate.
As the story opens Ramona is involved with Grace, a summer renter who has a boyfriend at home and has not yet labeled herself as gay. When they break up and Freddie, a childhood friend, moves back to town, Ramona is conflicted. She has feelings—strong feelings—for Freddie. “I’ve never wanted to touch a boy in the way I want to touch him. It makes me feel uncomfortable, but I’m starting to think that the gist of life is learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” (217)
And that is the lesson that Ramona, and the reader, learns from this story. By being with Freddie, “I’ve embraced another facet of myself. Life isn’t always written in the starts. Fate is mine to pen. I choose guys. I choose girls, I choose people. But most of all: I choose.” (280)
In addition, Freddie also has introduced Ramona to swimming, her ticket to community college and out of Eulogy. But can she take that step, used to thinking that everyone is dependent on her and she has no control of her future? Can Ramona choose the other aspects of her life? Through her various relationships explored in the past year, Ramona learns that even though, as a child, Freddie saw her as Peter Pan, she can “prepare to do what Peter never could.” She is the “captain” of her fate. (408)
Julie Murphy has given mature readers a story of resilience and the importance of controlling our choices.
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Junk Boy by Tony Abbott
Junk Boy introduces reads to two teen outliers, two dysfunctional families, two stories which become intertwined.
there is no putting
a tree back up after
it’s broken
and fallen
in a storm
maybe with us
with people
it’s different (336)
Bobby Lang, nicknamed Junk by the bullies at school because he lives in a place that has become a junkyard, spends his time flying under the radar, eyes down, not speaking. His father is drunk, abusive, unemployed, and listens to sad country songs; his mother left when he was a baby is, according to his father, is dead. Bobby has no self-confidence and little self-worth but then he meets Rachel, a talented artist who sees something else in him.
her eyes could
somehow see a me
that is more me
than I am
that is so weirdly more
so better than
actual
me (273-4)
But Rachel has her own family problems. Her father has just moved out and her physically-abusive mother wants the local priest to “reformat” Rachel who is gay.
As Rachel moves in and out of Bobby’s life, her need helps him figure out
what was I going to
say
do
be? (274)
And what he is, or becomes, is a rescuer and protector, a savior. As Father Percy tells him, “It’s what she found in you…” (352)
Reading Tony Abbott’s first verse novel, I felt like I was watching a movie unfold as I followed the protagonist on his Hero’s Journey.
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Junk Boy introduces reads to two teen outliers, two dysfunctional families, two stories which become intertwined.
there is no putting
a tree back up after
it’s broken
and fallen
in a storm
maybe with us
with people
it’s different (336)
Bobby Lang, nicknamed Junk by the bullies at school because he lives in a place that has become a junkyard, spends his time flying under the radar, eyes down, not speaking. His father is drunk, abusive, unemployed, and listens to sad country songs; his mother left when he was a baby is, according to his father, is dead. Bobby has no self-confidence and little self-worth but then he meets Rachel, a talented artist who sees something else in him.
her eyes could
somehow see a me
that is more me
than I am
that is so weirdly more
so better than
actual
me (273-4)
But Rachel has her own family problems. Her father has just moved out and her physically-abusive mother wants the local priest to “reformat” Rachel who is gay.
As Rachel moves in and out of Bobby’s life, her need helps him figure out
what was I going to
say
do
be? (274)
And what he is, or becomes, is a rescuer and protector, a savior. As Father Percy tells him, “It’s what she found in you…” (352)
Reading Tony Abbott’s first verse novel, I felt like I was watching a movie unfold as I followed the protagonist on his Hero’s Journey.
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Your Heart-My Sky: Love in the Time of Hunger by Margarita Engle
Liana and Amado's story introduced me to a somewhat contemporary era of Cuban history—“el period especial en tiempos de paz.” The government’s name for the 1990s is “the special period in times of peace,” but in reality is a period of extreme hunger resulting from the loss of Soviet aid, the US trade embargo, and the government prohibition of the growing, buying, and selling of agricultural products. Even though the 1991 Pan Am Games are being held in Havana, where visitors and athletes are sure to find food, the people in the towns face starvation, their food rations reduced even more.
No witnesses.
We are like an outer isle
Off the shore of another island.
Forgotten. (3)
My parents quietly call it tourist apartheid.
Everything for outsiders.
Nothing for islanders. (Liana, 6)
Readers are introduced to the disastrous effects of these policies on the citizens through the three narrators: Liana, Amado, and the Singing Dog who serves as a matchmaker between, and a guard of, the two adolescents.
Liana and Amado are both rebels in their own ways: Liana skips la escuela al campo “a summer of forced so-called-volunteer farm labor,” possibly giving up college or a government-assigned tolerable job, spending her days looking for food. Amado has made a pact with his brother who is in jail for speaking against the government. He is worried that he won’t be able to keep his promise to avoid the mandatory military service—“men have to serve in the reserves until they’re fifty”—and promote peace, possibly joining his brother in prison.
Maybe I should let myself be trained to kill,
become a soldier, gun-wielding, violent,
a dangerous stranger, no longer
me. (Amado, 24)
In beautiful lyrical verse, lines that caused me to re-read and savor, Liana and Amado meet and fall in love,
The pulse in my mind wanders away
From hunger, toward something I can barely name.
A spark
of wishlight
on the dark horizon’s
oceanic warmth. (Liana, 35)
Liana meets Amado’s grandparents who are growing vegetables and fruits in hidden gardens, and she is given seeds to start her own gardens. She dreams of starting a kitchen restaurant.
Everything has changed inside our minds
So that we are intensely aware of our ability
To seize control of hunger,
Transforming food
Into freedom. (110)
Amado and Liana help fleeing refugees, even though
Leaving the island is forbidden by law
And it is equally illegal
To know that someone is planning to flee. (95)
When Amado receives a note from his brother releasing him from their pact, he secretly plans their rafting escape. But the indecision brought about by the precariousness of the trip cause them to reconsider.
All we have in our shared hearts
is one imaginary raft--
How shall we use it?
Climb aboard or set it loose,
Let that alternate future
drift away? (Liana and Amado, 197)
A beautiful story of a terrible time in Cuban history and two resilient families connected by love (and a singing dog).
-----
Liana and Amado's story introduced me to a somewhat contemporary era of Cuban history—“el period especial en tiempos de paz.” The government’s name for the 1990s is “the special period in times of peace,” but in reality is a period of extreme hunger resulting from the loss of Soviet aid, the US trade embargo, and the government prohibition of the growing, buying, and selling of agricultural products. Even though the 1991 Pan Am Games are being held in Havana, where visitors and athletes are sure to find food, the people in the towns face starvation, their food rations reduced even more.
No witnesses.
We are like an outer isle
Off the shore of another island.
Forgotten. (3)
My parents quietly call it tourist apartheid.
Everything for outsiders.
Nothing for islanders. (Liana, 6)
Readers are introduced to the disastrous effects of these policies on the citizens through the three narrators: Liana, Amado, and the Singing Dog who serves as a matchmaker between, and a guard of, the two adolescents.
Liana and Amado are both rebels in their own ways: Liana skips la escuela al campo “a summer of forced so-called-volunteer farm labor,” possibly giving up college or a government-assigned tolerable job, spending her days looking for food. Amado has made a pact with his brother who is in jail for speaking against the government. He is worried that he won’t be able to keep his promise to avoid the mandatory military service—“men have to serve in the reserves until they’re fifty”—and promote peace, possibly joining his brother in prison.
Maybe I should let myself be trained to kill,
become a soldier, gun-wielding, violent,
a dangerous stranger, no longer
me. (Amado, 24)
In beautiful lyrical verse, lines that caused me to re-read and savor, Liana and Amado meet and fall in love,
The pulse in my mind wanders away
From hunger, toward something I can barely name.
A spark
of wishlight
on the dark horizon’s
oceanic warmth. (Liana, 35)
Liana meets Amado’s grandparents who are growing vegetables and fruits in hidden gardens, and she is given seeds to start her own gardens. She dreams of starting a kitchen restaurant.
Everything has changed inside our minds
So that we are intensely aware of our ability
To seize control of hunger,
Transforming food
Into freedom. (110)
Amado and Liana help fleeing refugees, even though
Leaving the island is forbidden by law
And it is equally illegal
To know that someone is planning to flee. (95)
When Amado receives a note from his brother releasing him from their pact, he secretly plans their rafting escape. But the indecision brought about by the precariousness of the trip cause them to reconsider.
All we have in our shared hearts
is one imaginary raft--
How shall we use it?
Climb aboard or set it loose,
Let that alternate future
drift away? (Liana and Amado, 197)
A beautiful story of a terrible time in Cuban history and two resilient families connected by love (and a singing dog).
-----
Wings in the Wild by Margarita Engle
2018: Teen refugees from two different worlds.
Soleida, the bird-girl (La Nina Ave), is fleeing an oppressive Cuban government who has arrested her parents, protesters of artistic liberty, their hidden chained-bird sculptures exposed during a hurricane; she is stranded in a refugee camp in Costa Rica after walking thousands of miles toward freedom.
Dariel is fleeing from a life in California where he plays music that communicates with wild animals but also where he and his famous parents are followed by paparazzi and his life is planned out, complete with Ivy League university. When a wildfire burns his fingertips, he decides to go with his Cuban Abuelo to interview los Cubanos de Costa Rica for his book. And then he decides to stay to study, hopefully to save, the environment.
When Soleida and Dariel meet, he helps her feel joy—and the right to feel joy—again, and they fall in love, combining their shared passions for art and music, artistic freedom, and eco-activism into a human rights and freedom-of-expression campaign to save Soleida’s parents and other Cuban artists and to save the endangered wildlife and the forests through a reforestation project.
This soulful story, beautifully and lyrically written by the 2017-19 Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate Margarita Engle is not as much a story of romance but of a combined calling to save the planet and the soul of the people—art.
Wings in the Wild also reintroduces two favorite characters, Liana and Amado (Your Heart-My Sky) who “became local heroes by teaching everyone how to farm during the island’s most tragic time of hunger.”
-----
2018: Teen refugees from two different worlds.
Soleida, the bird-girl (La Nina Ave), is fleeing an oppressive Cuban government who has arrested her parents, protesters of artistic liberty, their hidden chained-bird sculptures exposed during a hurricane; she is stranded in a refugee camp in Costa Rica after walking thousands of miles toward freedom.
Dariel is fleeing from a life in California where he plays music that communicates with wild animals but also where he and his famous parents are followed by paparazzi and his life is planned out, complete with Ivy League university. When a wildfire burns his fingertips, he decides to go with his Cuban Abuelo to interview los Cubanos de Costa Rica for his book. And then he decides to stay to study, hopefully to save, the environment.
When Soleida and Dariel meet, he helps her feel joy—and the right to feel joy—again, and they fall in love, combining their shared passions for art and music, artistic freedom, and eco-activism into a human rights and freedom-of-expression campaign to save Soleida’s parents and other Cuban artists and to save the endangered wildlife and the forests through a reforestation project.
This soulful story, beautifully and lyrically written by the 2017-19 Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate Margarita Engle is not as much a story of romance but of a combined calling to save the planet and the soul of the people—art.
Wings in the Wild also reintroduces two favorite characters, Liana and Amado (Your Heart-My Sky) who “became local heroes by teaching everyone how to farm during the island’s most tragic time of hunger.”
-----
Wild Dreamers by Margarita Engle
…if we don’t rewild half of the Earth,
we’ll lose biodiversity, millions of species
gone forever… (56)
They first stopped at a cavern where Amado and Liana (YOUR HEART-MY SKY) gave them food, life jackets, a compass and a singing dog, Cielo, who became Leandro’s therapy dog after his father drowned trying to rescue him when he fell from the raft. After that Leandro fainted especially at water.
Ana’s mother won a US Immigration lottery and a pathway to the United States. Her American-born Cuban father has become a extremist and is in hiding. Ana and her mother are living “unhoused” in a feral park in the Golden Gate Recreation Area even though her mother works as a government botanist at the airport,
Two 17-year-olds meet in the path of a puma where Cielo makes the match between humans
matchmaking is every singing dog’s
greatest challenge
and most satisfying task (15)
After Ana meets Leandro, she and her mother work for Leandro’s uncle who is a friend from Cuba and buys a nursery so her mother has a new job and, finally, a home.
A novel told in free, verse, two-voice poetry, and concrete poetry, follows the relationship between the two as they fight to rewild animals, elude Ana’s father who tries to kidnap her, help Leandro lose his fear of water, run a nursery and a Cubano bakery (Leandro and his family), and help the puma keep her cubs and be rewilded to a place where there will be no more inbreeding.
imagine a time when there are wildlife crossings
over or under every highway on Earth. (215)
Beautifully lyrical, this is a romance and eco-fiction that reflects important connections, dependencies, and interactions between people and their natural environments, a novel about “teenagers who are rediscovering the natural world and their place in it.” (Author’s Note).
Readers learns about rewilding along with Ana and Leandro.
The Trans-Canada Highway has forty bridges
and tunnels to help animals migrate
and find mates.
In Kenya there are underpasses for elephants,
in Singapore, bridges for pangolins, in Australia,
tunnels for penguins, and in Costa Rica, ropes
between trees so sloths and monkeys can travel
high above roads, even in places where the forest
has been logged. (181)
Ten years before, Leandro’s family escaped Cuba
on a lashed-together jumble
of inner tubes, balsa wood, and fear (1)
-----
…if we don’t rewild half of the Earth,
we’ll lose biodiversity, millions of species
gone forever… (56)
They first stopped at a cavern where Amado and Liana (YOUR HEART-MY SKY) gave them food, life jackets, a compass and a singing dog, Cielo, who became Leandro’s therapy dog after his father drowned trying to rescue him when he fell from the raft. After that Leandro fainted especially at water.
Ana’s mother won a US Immigration lottery and a pathway to the United States. Her American-born Cuban father has become a extremist and is in hiding. Ana and her mother are living “unhoused” in a feral park in the Golden Gate Recreation Area even though her mother works as a government botanist at the airport,
Two 17-year-olds meet in the path of a puma where Cielo makes the match between humans
matchmaking is every singing dog’s
greatest challenge
and most satisfying task (15)
After Ana meets Leandro, she and her mother work for Leandro’s uncle who is a friend from Cuba and buys a nursery so her mother has a new job and, finally, a home.
A novel told in free, verse, two-voice poetry, and concrete poetry, follows the relationship between the two as they fight to rewild animals, elude Ana’s father who tries to kidnap her, help Leandro lose his fear of water, run a nursery and a Cubano bakery (Leandro and his family), and help the puma keep her cubs and be rewilded to a place where there will be no more inbreeding.
imagine a time when there are wildlife crossings
over or under every highway on Earth. (215)
Beautifully lyrical, this is a romance and eco-fiction that reflects important connections, dependencies, and interactions between people and their natural environments, a novel about “teenagers who are rediscovering the natural world and their place in it.” (Author’s Note).
Readers learns about rewilding along with Ana and Leandro.
The Trans-Canada Highway has forty bridges
and tunnels to help animals migrate
and find mates.
In Kenya there are underpasses for elephants,
in Singapore, bridges for pangolins, in Australia,
tunnels for penguins, and in Costa Rica, ropes
between trees so sloths and monkeys can travel
high above roads, even in places where the forest
has been logged. (181)
Ten years before, Leandro’s family escaped Cuba
on a lashed-together jumble
of inner tubes, balsa wood, and fear (1)
-----
Scars Like Wings by Erin Stewart
“I was a normal fifteen-year-old who went to football games on weekends and spent way too much time rehearsing for the spring musical. I was a daughter. A friend. A brunette. A singer. I was a million things.… Now, I’m only one thing—the Burned Girl.” (40-41)
Ava is the survivor of fire—the fire that killed her father; mother; and Sara, her cousin-best friend, the daughter of Aunt Cora and Uncle Glenn. When Ava awakes in the hospital, over 60% of her body has been burned and she has lost her family and home. And her normal life.
A year after the fire during which Ava has lived with her aunt and uncle in Sara’s room, homeschooled, she promises them that she will try two weeks at a new school, planning that that will be her only two weeks in school.
But then she meets a survivor of a car crash, Piper, a wheelchair-bound, also scarred, gutsy, flashy, get-out-there-and-do-it, strong girl—or so it seems. She also meets Asad.
“No matter what reaction people have, there’s always one common thread:
1. Everyone looks at me.
2. Then everyone looks away.”
Until now.” (32)
With Piper and Asad’s support, Ava tries for a “new normal” but it’s not all uphill. “—in the last thirty-six hours, I had an epic meltdown, took a harrowing trip down memory lane, and visited my suicidal friend in the hospital. No wonder [Cora and Glenn] look at me like I’m a bomb about to detonate.” (322)
This novel tore at my heart; I loved all the characters—Ava, Asad, Piper, Aunt Cora and cowboy-boot-wearing Uncle Glenn, and even mean girl Kenzie and her more-sympathetic sidekick Sage. All characters were so well-developed, and each had their own backstory, even Dr. Layne, the therapist (no flat characters here) that it is hard to believe that this is Erin Stewart's debut novel.
Scars with Wings is an important book for all of us who have scars—physical or psychological.
-----
“I was a normal fifteen-year-old who went to football games on weekends and spent way too much time rehearsing for the spring musical. I was a daughter. A friend. A brunette. A singer. I was a million things.… Now, I’m only one thing—the Burned Girl.” (40-41)
Ava is the survivor of fire—the fire that killed her father; mother; and Sara, her cousin-best friend, the daughter of Aunt Cora and Uncle Glenn. When Ava awakes in the hospital, over 60% of her body has been burned and she has lost her family and home. And her normal life.
A year after the fire during which Ava has lived with her aunt and uncle in Sara’s room, homeschooled, she promises them that she will try two weeks at a new school, planning that that will be her only two weeks in school.
But then she meets a survivor of a car crash, Piper, a wheelchair-bound, also scarred, gutsy, flashy, get-out-there-and-do-it, strong girl—or so it seems. She also meets Asad.
“No matter what reaction people have, there’s always one common thread:
1. Everyone looks at me.
2. Then everyone looks away.”
Until now.” (32)
With Piper and Asad’s support, Ava tries for a “new normal” but it’s not all uphill. “—in the last thirty-six hours, I had an epic meltdown, took a harrowing trip down memory lane, and visited my suicidal friend in the hospital. No wonder [Cora and Glenn] look at me like I’m a bomb about to detonate.” (322)
This novel tore at my heart; I loved all the characters—Ava, Asad, Piper, Aunt Cora and cowboy-boot-wearing Uncle Glenn, and even mean girl Kenzie and her more-sympathetic sidekick Sage. All characters were so well-developed, and each had their own backstory, even Dr. Layne, the therapist (no flat characters here) that it is hard to believe that this is Erin Stewart's debut novel.
Scars with Wings is an important book for all of us who have scars—physical or psychological.
-----
Forward Me Back to You by Mitali Perkins
When 16-year-old Katina is assaulted in the stairwell by the popular star basketball player, her jujitsu skills let her defend herself. But when she reports the attack, it is she who is made so uncomfortable she has to leave school. Her confidence shattered, she wonders if she will ever be able to trust men again.
Robin was born in Kolkata, abandoned by his mother, and adopted by loving, wealthy, supportive American parents at age 3, but he has never stopped thinking about his first mother and his life seems to have no direction.
When Kat is sent to Boston to be homeschooled by a family friend’s aunt, Grandma Vee, she becomes a part of a teen church group. When Pastor Gregory takes Robin, Katina, and Gracie to Kolkata to work with female human trafficking survivors, with the help of her new support system and some of the young survivors themselves, Katina learns to trust again; Robin, now Ravi, finds purpose in his life; and Gracie, who was the major support system for both of them, finally gets Ravi to realize his love for her.
Told through very short chapters that alternate between Kat and Robin and simply written, Mitali Perkins new novel would be valuable read that is accessible to, and appropriate for, all adolescent readers.
-----
When 16-year-old Katina is assaulted in the stairwell by the popular star basketball player, her jujitsu skills let her defend herself. But when she reports the attack, it is she who is made so uncomfortable she has to leave school. Her confidence shattered, she wonders if she will ever be able to trust men again.
Robin was born in Kolkata, abandoned by his mother, and adopted by loving, wealthy, supportive American parents at age 3, but he has never stopped thinking about his first mother and his life seems to have no direction.
When Kat is sent to Boston to be homeschooled by a family friend’s aunt, Grandma Vee, she becomes a part of a teen church group. When Pastor Gregory takes Robin, Katina, and Gracie to Kolkata to work with female human trafficking survivors, with the help of her new support system and some of the young survivors themselves, Katina learns to trust again; Robin, now Ravi, finds purpose in his life; and Gracie, who was the major support system for both of them, finally gets Ravi to realize his love for her.
Told through very short chapters that alternate between Kat and Robin and simply written, Mitali Perkins new novel would be valuable read that is accessible to, and appropriate for, all adolescent readers.
-----
Jumper by Melanie Crowder
Blair Scott has a passion – firefighting. She has a goal—to become a smoke jumper even though she is only 19 years old. But Blair also has a secret—she has Type 1 Diabetes, a condition which could keep her from reaching her goal. In addition Blair has a best friend who will help her achieve her goal, despite the risks.
Luckily, Blair has an aunt, a biomedical engineer, who has physically trained her to withstand and adapt to strenuous conditions and has modified her diabetes equipment and a Smart watch to monitor her. And she has Jason, her best friend, who follows her when, in exceptionally active fire year, they are both accepted into U.S. Forest Service smokejumper training.
Blair feels she has to take risks and prove herself as, not only a young recruit, but especially as a woman.
This is a novel of adventure, danger, courage, passion, friendships, support, grief, and, most of all, the power of fire. Well-researched, the novel provides a vast amount of information about wildfire and firefighting training and protocols and will appeal to many teen readers.
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Blair Scott has a passion – firefighting. She has a goal—to become a smoke jumper even though she is only 19 years old. But Blair also has a secret—she has Type 1 Diabetes, a condition which could keep her from reaching her goal. In addition Blair has a best friend who will help her achieve her goal, despite the risks.
Luckily, Blair has an aunt, a biomedical engineer, who has physically trained her to withstand and adapt to strenuous conditions and has modified her diabetes equipment and a Smart watch to monitor her. And she has Jason, her best friend, who follows her when, in exceptionally active fire year, they are both accepted into U.S. Forest Service smokejumper training.
Blair feels she has to take risks and prove herself as, not only a young recruit, but especially as a woman.
This is a novel of adventure, danger, courage, passion, friendships, support, grief, and, most of all, the power of fire. Well-researched, the novel provides a vast amount of information about wildfire and firefighting training and protocols and will appeal to many teen readers.
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Jackpot by Nic Stone
What would you do if you won the Mighty Millions Jackpot—all or even a portion of two hundred twelve million? What if even just some of that money could keep you from becoming homeless again, allow you the dream of college, take care of the health of your mother and little brother?
About 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold. Rico Danger, the main character of Jackpot, is one of these children.
“…I think that this is totally what I’ve secretly wanted—being a normal teenager with friends that I hang out with in basements on Saturday nights…”
But Rico doesn’t have time to hang out and make friends. She works as many shifts as possible at the Gas ‘n Go to help her mother pay the rent and for other necessities, while juggling high school and taking care of her little brother while her mother works double shifts. Rico plans the budget, does the shopping, and worries about the bills, being the financially-responsible household member. She agonizes about their lack of health insurance, especially when her young brother gets sick. She dreads becoming homeless as when her mother’s boyfriend kicked them out. And she keeps her head down at school, ashamed of her thrift store clothing.
But on Christmas Eve, working at the Gas ‘n Go, Rico sells two lottery tickets to an older woman who lets her keep one of the tickets for herself. When it is announced that one of the lottery winners bought the ticket at her store, Rico is sure it was the ticket bought by this woman, the ticket Rico did not choose. As the winnings go unclaimed, Rico plans to find this woman, remind her of the ticket, and hopefully get a cut of the winnings. She swallows her pride and asks Alexander Macklin, the handsome, rich, popular Zan who was also in the store on Christmas Eve, to help her identify and find this lady.
As Rico and Zan and his two friends spend more time together, she experiences not only the life she was missing but learns that things—and people—are not always what they seem and maybe they all have more control over their circumstances than she thought.
All the characters captivated me from the beginning. An added bonus were the short chapters told from the point of view of objects—the lottery ticket, the taxi cab, bed sheets, ….
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What would you do if you won the Mighty Millions Jackpot—all or even a portion of two hundred twelve million? What if even just some of that money could keep you from becoming homeless again, allow you the dream of college, take care of the health of your mother and little brother?
About 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold. Rico Danger, the main character of Jackpot, is one of these children.
“…I think that this is totally what I’ve secretly wanted—being a normal teenager with friends that I hang out with in basements on Saturday nights…”
But Rico doesn’t have time to hang out and make friends. She works as many shifts as possible at the Gas ‘n Go to help her mother pay the rent and for other necessities, while juggling high school and taking care of her little brother while her mother works double shifts. Rico plans the budget, does the shopping, and worries about the bills, being the financially-responsible household member. She agonizes about their lack of health insurance, especially when her young brother gets sick. She dreads becoming homeless as when her mother’s boyfriend kicked them out. And she keeps her head down at school, ashamed of her thrift store clothing.
But on Christmas Eve, working at the Gas ‘n Go, Rico sells two lottery tickets to an older woman who lets her keep one of the tickets for herself. When it is announced that one of the lottery winners bought the ticket at her store, Rico is sure it was the ticket bought by this woman, the ticket Rico did not choose. As the winnings go unclaimed, Rico plans to find this woman, remind her of the ticket, and hopefully get a cut of the winnings. She swallows her pride and asks Alexander Macklin, the handsome, rich, popular Zan who was also in the store on Christmas Eve, to help her identify and find this lady.
As Rico and Zan and his two friends spend more time together, she experiences not only the life she was missing but learns that things—and people—are not always what they seem and maybe they all have more control over their circumstances than she thought.
All the characters captivated me from the beginning. An added bonus were the short chapters told from the point of view of objects—the lottery ticket, the taxi cab, bed sheets, ….
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