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Uhrig, Betsy. Welcome to Dweeb Club

September 28th 2021 by Margaret K. McElderry Books

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Jason Sloan is starting seventh grade, and wants to choose to be in one of the many clubs offered at his Flounder Bay school. Using the exquisite reasoning of a tween, he decides to join the mysterious H.A.I.R. club because he and  his friend Glamorous Steve are the first two to sign up, so they figure they can be officers. There aren't a lot of other kids who join, but there are a few. The well coordinated Sonia, tall Andrew, organized Hoppy (whose family owns the second biggest business in town), Vincent (whose sister has dared him to join EVERY club, including crochet club), Laura (on whom Jason has a bit of a crush), and Nikhil. The club turns out to be the brain child of Prescient Technologies, a mysterious company that has donated surveillance equipment to the school as long as it is monitored by a select group of students. The faculty advisor show the group how to use it, and there are lots of caveats (and a few threats!) about revealing personal information about other students. The strange thing is that there are segments of the tape that show our intrepid group members, but they look very different. Jason has gone from scrawny to overfed, Nikhil has a mustache, Sonia has taken to wearing mismatched clothes with an ever present boyfriend. This is a picture of the group during their senior year-- but how is this being taped? The group decides to check out the school at midnight, especially since the one security breach seems to be croutons missing from the cafeteria. They don't find their future selves, but they do find the crouton culprit-- a skunk! This incident lands Jason in the news. He asks his aunt, who works at the biggest company in town, Woozle (basically, a web site for hypochondriacs) and his uncle, who works in tech, to help him figure out some of the equipment. Of course, their investigations lead to a lot of madcap mayhem, at one point involving a golf cart on the posh Woozle campus! Will the H.A.I.R. group be able to figure out why they are seeing into the future, and will they be able to manipulate the present in order to change it?

Strengths: Uhrig's writing in very funny, and many of her turns are Sonnenblickian. Nikhil's mustache is described (in the E ARC) as "something that barely survived a harsh winter and collapsed on his upper lip". There are multiple funny scenes that had me snickering out loud. There's some angsty middle school romance at the center of all of the futuristic visions that I enjoyed. I love that not only are the parents around and supportive, but there is an obnoxious younger sister whom Jason indulges, AND a cool aunt and uncle. This is a great book to hand to readers who normally like realistic, humorous fiction like Uhrig's Double the Danger and Zero Zucchini or Richards' Stu Truly, but who need to read a speculative fiction book for class. 

Weaknesses: There were a LOT Of characters to keep straight. Given that the plot involved not only a club, but different versions of the future, and we see changes reflected in the different characters, it made sense to have that many, but I had trouble keeping them straight and have clearly missed one of the characters entirely! 
What I really think: I'm definitely purchasing this, since I love Uhrig's writing, but I'm curious to see what my readers think of some of Prescient Technologies quirky acronyms. My students are always looking for more humorous books, and the incident with the skunk alone will sell many readers on this funny title. 

Hopkinson, Deborah. The Deadlist Diseases Then and Now

October 5th 2021 by Scholastic Focus

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

This is the first book in "The Deadlist" series. In a nicely formatted and illustrated book (available in hardcover and paperback, which will probably show up at book fairs), we see the evolving history of epidemics, starting with extensive coverage of the Great Mortality in the 1300s, with an overview of a few earlier incidents. It was interesting to hear that this was what the epidemic was referred to at the time; we tend to call it the Black Plague. I learned more about this event than I thought it possible to know, and the book continues with further information about other diseases and the people involved in dealing with them, like Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a Chinese doctor at the beginning of the 20th century whose work influenced how we dealt with Covid-19. The 1918 flu also gets good coverage, and there's an overview of other diseases like smallpox, polio, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. this is well-formatted for easy reading, and conversational in tone. Scholastic Focus has come out with some interesting nonfiction titles lately which I very much enjoyed.