MMGM- Unstuck and The Enigma Girls

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Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
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Always in the Middle 

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Unleashing Readers

Dee, Barbara. Unstuck

February 27, 2024 by Aladdin

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Lyla is struggling in 7th grade; her best friend from elementary school, Rania, attends Dickinson Middle School, while Lyla attends Whitman. Lyla still hasn't found a new friend, but does eat lunch every day with Journey, a quirky girl who is very interested in animals and a bit less interested in Lyla's concerns. Lyla's older sister, Dahlia, is a senior in high school, and struggling with writing her college application essays, which causes a lot of friction between her sister and her parents. This also causes Lyla to feel that her parents don't really care about her. For her language arts class, her favorite teacher, Ms. Bowman, is having the students do whatever creative writing makes them happy, and this is a bright spot in Lyla's world because she has a fascinating and complicated fantasy novel she is working on. She has the most amazing first sentence, character studies, names, and even maps... but she can't get beyond that first sentence. She envies others in her class, like Stella, who seems to churn out writing effortlessly. She becomes very stressed with the whole process, especially since she wants to enter-- and win!-- a local writing contest that Dahlia had done well in when she was in middle school. Not only that, but she feels disconnected from Raina. When the two finally plan a sleepoever, Lyla is disappointed that some of Raina's new friends from the track team at her school are also there. Lyla really wants to discuss her story with Raina to help figure out the direction she should take, but when she talks about it briefly, she comes across as bragging, since Raina's new friends make her feel less accomplished. The tensions at home increase, and Dahlia confides in her that she doesn't want to go to college right away, but is afraid to tell her parents. Not only that, but she is failing some of her courses! She begs Lyla not to tell, which puts her in a difficult position. When Lyla finds out that Raina's new friends bullied Journey so much that her parents pulled her out of school and homeschooled her, Lyla wants to confront her old friend, but isn't sure quite how to approach the topic, especially since the two rarely talk. As her stress levels rise, Ms. Bowman tries to help, having the whole class do free writing, letting Lyla go to the library for a change of scenery, and letting her know that all writers occasionally struggle and that Lyla should be kind to herself and "write her feelings". This helps, and Lyla begins to work on her story, using it as a way to process her emotions about what is going on in her life. Dee includes 25 tips for writers at the end of the book.  

Strengths: Dee is always on trend with issue of friendship, mental health, and family dynamics; in fact, she may set the trends. Dahlia's college application process is no doubt exactly what many post-pandemic high schoolers are going through right now. Who knew that gap years were even an option? The fact that the parents are supportive but also really irritated with her is perfect. Ms. Bowman is a great teacher (and also plays bass in a rock band!), and will be a big draw for adult readers who love her approach to the writing process. The friend drama is definitely on point for today's tweens as well; everyone loses at least one friend during middle school, and when you only HAVE one friend, it is especially devastating. There is a nice balance of the different plot threads. 
Weaknesses: This was a hard read for me personally, and we're supposed to share these emotions with people or they get angry because we're holding back, right? I was Lyla in middle school. I wrote the world's worst novel in 7th and 8th grade, and was probably just as irritating to my friends about my process. Does Dee capture middle grade sensibilities and emotions? Absolutely. This just hit a little close to home for me, but was certainly very well written and insightful. I certainly did not become a writer. 

What I really think: Dee's novels are very popular in my library, and I will definitely purchase this one. It's a good choice for readers who are working on their own fantasy novel, or who enjoyed Baptist's Isaiah Dunn Saves the Day or Mills' Write This Down. 

Fleming, Candace. The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II

March 5, 2024 by Scholastic Focus
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Fleming's Scholastic Focus titles like The Curse of the Mummy (2021) and Crash From Outer Space: Unraveling the Mystery of Flying Saucers, Alien Beings, and Roswell (2022) are popular in my library, but since this involved World War II, it will be even MORE popular! 

Focusing on just ten of the young women who worked at Bletchley Park in a variety of roles, this book gives a great overview of the different types of jobs held by women from different social classes who had a range of abilities. There were debutantes who had been to school abroad, and so spoke language, girls who signed up for the WRENs, and even tall girls who were assigned to the bombe machines because of their height! Given that, according to the book, there were four hundred men and a thousand women working at the facility, this is just a fraction of the stories that could be told. 

While all of the women signed the official secrets act, and in general, held their tongue and work their work was (two women who got in a fight in the canteen and mentioned some of the secrets out loud were summariliy dismissed!), there is a lot of information about the types of work they did, and even pictures of some of the Enigman machines, German cipher books, and notecards. While there were a number of steps that the higher ups knew in their entirety, the workers at each step were unaware of what the other divisions were doing, to the point where messages were pushed through openings so that the workers couldn't communicate with each other. Some of the more significant accomplishments of the code breaking at Bletchley included taking down the Italian navy and sinking the German Bismarck. The depiction of how the women would feel when codes didn't get broken, knowing that it meant that the British army didn't have information about what attacks might happen, was heartbreaking. 

There was a good mix of information about the code breaking that went on and how daily life unfolded. I loved that one of the more well-to-do women found a family friend with an estate eight  miles away who was able to billet a number of the women. The feeling that everyone had to do their part makes the story intriguing, and there is even some romance. It is amazing how young some of the women were. The research to uncover information about them had to have been daunting, but Fleming is a master at this. 

It's hard to even get my mind around all of the information in the book, but it is presented in a very engaging way. Young readers won't have seen the television program, The Bletchley Circle, about women who had been working in decoding and didn't tell anyone about their wartime activities even when they came back to haunt them in various ways in the 1950s, but will still be interested in the sort of work that was done. Not as many of my female readers are interested in WWII, but that makes this book even more valuable. Keep this one available for readers who enjoyed Farrell's Standing Up Against Hate: How Black Women in the Army Helped Change the Course of WWII (2019), Wein's A Thousand Sisters:The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II (2019), and Pearson's Fly Girls: The Daring American Women Pilots Who Helped Win WWII (2018).