Leah vs. Art (Team Awkward #2)

McCullough, Joy and Bybee, Veeda. Leah vs. Art (Team Awkward #2)
June 17, 2025 by Aladdin
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

After their rather harrowing first day of school in Jojo vs. Middle School, Team Awkward is back. This time, the book focuses on Leah, who is glad to be in one place in Virginia after spending her childhood following her father's assignments as a dentist in the military. Leah is rather irked and embarrassed by her parents, who are not as organized and focused as she is. In fact, they think she needs to loosen up, and don't want her to add Quiz Bowl to her otherwise packed extracurricular calendar, even though they should know that it would look good on her college applications. She starts attending art club with her neighbor, Ben, who shares her biracial identity, although he is Black and Lao while she is white and Thai. Since Quiz Bowl and art club meet on the same day, she plans to ditch art club, and ropes both Ben and her older brother Steven to cover for her. She gets very invested in art club, and even takes the group to the frozen yogurt shop where Steven works for extra practice, even challenging rival Finston Prep to a test match over cones! When Leah becomes a little too intense about Quiz Bowl, it causes problems with Jojo, Izzy, and Ryan. Ben let's her deception slip right before the big competition, but Leah's easygoing parents don't punish her for ignoring their directives, and go to watch her at the meet, which has some rocky events. At this time, I can't find any information about a third volume. 

Strengths: It's great to see a student who is focused and determined to better herself, even when her parents don't think she needs to do so much! It's a nice generational conflict, and a bit of a switch from parents always being the responsible ones. There aren't a lot of books about Quiz Bowl competitions (McLean's Catch Us if You Can, Egan's Golden Ticket, Grabenstein's The Smartest Kid in the Universe, Farr's Margie Kelley Breaks the Dress Code) and I certainly had friends who were involved. , so that was a fun inclusion. The brief interactions with Ben were interesting, and I wish we had seen more of him. 

Weaknesses: I am never a huge fan of students lying to their parents and not being punished. The parents should have discussed the reasons for art more thoroughly, but once Leah lied to them, there should have been punishments! 
What I really think: This is a fun series for readers who like books from different characters' perspectives, like Simon's The Cupcake Club or Kimmel's Forever Four.