MMGM- Kyra, Just for Today and Marked Man

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Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
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Always in the Middle 

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Unleashing Readers

Zarr, Sara. Kyra, Just for Today

March 5, 2024 by Balzer + Bray

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Kyra and her mother Meg have a good life along the coast in California. Not great, but much better than five years ago, when Meg was struggling with active alcoholism. Her mom's been clean for a while, and the two have a routine. Her mother has a cleaning business that keeps them fed and in a decent apartment, even if they struggle to pay some bills. Meg is thoughtful about her recovery, goes to an AA meeting every week and talks to her sponsor. Kyra goes to a group, too, and is friends with Lu and her older sister Casey, who also attend. Their father is an alcoholic who left the family, and their mother remarried Steve, who is a high school friend of Meg's, so the families are very close. Lately, Lu has been hanging out a lot with Till and her group of friends, which disconcerts Kyra. Over winter break, Meg is given the opportunity to spend time for free in a client's house in Lake Tahoe, provided that she cleans it. Since Kyra has never seen snow, she's excited to go somewhere, especially since everyone else in her class seems to travel as well. The two have a great time, but when they get back, something seems off with Meg. She's working longer hours, sometimes sleeping past her alarm, and Kyra is very worried that she has started to drink. There are even a couple of days that she calls Kyra off sick from school so that she can help clean. Kyra is afraid to say anything in her support group or to Lu, especially since her friend is spending more and more time with the "cool girls". Kyra is able to hold things together until she burns her ankle making caramel, so that she can make cookies for Lu's birthday. Unable to get ahold of her mother, she calls Casey, who takes her home. Casey's mom takes Kyra to the urgent care to get her ankle looked at, and when Meg is finally located, it's decided that Kyra will stay with Lu's family for a while. Meg has started drinking again, and while it's not as bad as it had been, it's still worse than a "slip". In some ways, it's a relief to be a Lu's house where she is taken care of, and to finally know what is going on with Meg, but it's also hard to deal with friend issues and problems at school when she is worried that the life she has built with her mother might all crumble. Will Meg be able to regain her sobriety and keep life on an even keel for her and Kyra?

Strengths: I've been a fan of Zarr's work since Sweethearts (2008), and especially loved her entry into the realm of middle grade, A Song Called Home (2022). While there are many books with middle school aged characters facing really bad life situations and dealing with grief, it's much more realistic to see tenuous situations that are generally pretty good, but which can go bad in the blink of an eye. It's interesting to see how a young character copes with having to take care of herself and her parent, and to see the skills that Kyra is able to develop. She cooks really well, likes to clean, and does well with schoolwork when she is not worried about her mother. The depiction of a support group is helpful in case readers might be in need of one themselves; the details of what goes on at a meeting, as well as the links to help find where they are held, could be very useful to the right reader. The best part of this was the sense of resiliency and optimism. It wasn't a "oh, everything will be perfectly fine" sort of vibe, but rather one of quiet optimism that hard work and care will pay off, if only "just for today". Sometimes that's all we can hope for. 

Weaknesses: This moved a little bit slowly at first, but I started to realize that this gave the book a palpable feeling of dread that mimics Kyra's emotions. I think that my readers will like this, although I do wish the cover were slightly different. 

What I really think: It seems like there were more books about children dealing with alcoholism in the 1970s, but we are seeing a few more in the last couple of years, like Petro-Roy's Life in the Balance (2021), Bailey's Snow Foal (2021), Walter's The King of Jam Sandwiches (2021), Englefried's Learning to Fall (2022), and Lord's Home Away From Home (2023). This is the kind of sad book that does very well with my students, so I will definitely purchase a copy. 

Florio, John and Shapiro, Ouisie.

Marked Man: Frank Serpico's Inside Battle Against Police Corruption

March 19, 2024 by Roaring Brook Press

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Born in 1936, Frank Serpico's life started out in a fairly typical fashion. Immigrant parents, working in the family store, high school graduation, serving in Korea. He eventually made it into the police academy, and that's where things get interesting. He had several different assignments, and tried to move up in the ranks, but lacked the ability to read the room, which made it hard for him to get ahead. He dressed differently, and perhaps didn't connect with other officers or superiors who would have helped his upward movement. Of course, this served him well when he was exposed to the corruption in the police force. Upon receiving an envelope with $300 in it (which was a lot of money back in the 1960s; my mother was making $3,000 a year as a teacher), he feels immediately that it isn't right to keep it, and tries to talk to several people about it. He learns that this is considered part of the job, and that most of the policemen are on the take. When he tries to consult "good cops" and go to the newspaper, he finds out that even the editor of the newspaper pays bribes to the force so that the newspaper trucks don't get tickets. It's hard to fight that kind of system, but he eventually helps break a story, and for a while, there is some upheaval in the force and people brought to justice. Of course, if we look at other instances in the book, some from the 1990s when headlines screamed that someone was bringing home $4,000 a week in dirty money, it seems that Serpico changed very little. He was injured in the line of duty and eventually left the police force to live a quiet life after the 1973 Peter Maas book about his experiences was turned into a 1973 movie with Al Pacino. 

Strengths: For as violent and dangerous as Serpico's life was, the book is fairly tame. There's plenty of suspense and danger, but most of the book is concerned with how Serpico tried to work within the system to change things. There's just enough of an overview of his life before and after this rather short period of time when he was involved in trying to uncover corruption. There are a few pictures, lots of source notes, and this has the same appeal that this team's 2019 War in the Ring: Joe Louis, Max Schmeling, and the Fight between America and Hitler has. An excellent choice for starting a research project or just getting a short dose of interesting history. 
Weaknesses: There is one f-bomb at the very beginning of the book, in a quote from Serpico himself, which wasn't unnecessary. It would have been nice to see some of the impact of Serpico's work on current policing, but it's not the fault of Florio and Shapiro that the law enforcement system has changed all too little. 
What I really think: This is a fairly short book (160 pages including lots of end notes), and there's enough interest in true crime in my library that I will purchase this to hand to readers who have gobbled up all of the Denson FBI Files books or Sullivan's graphic novels like Escape From Alacatraz.