It's
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
at
at
and #IMWAYR day
at
February 3, 2026 by Kar-Ben Publishing
ARC provided by the April Patten
Rebecca Weiss and Nikki Davis both are dealing with a lot in their lives. Rebecca's mother has passed away, and she lives in an apartment with her father and older brother Noah. She's studying for her bat mitzvah but struggling with every aspect of it, taking solace in her large rescue dog, Meatball. Nikki's mother has lost her job housesitting a Portland Heights Mansion, so the two have had to move closer to her mother's new job at Wonderful World of Waffles. Nikki has never told her friends Saylor and Willow about her family circumstances, but let them assume from her fancy address and her designer hand-me-downs that she was one of their wealthy crowd. When Nikki moves into Rebecca's apartment building, things don't go well. Rebecca hears Nikki yelling about how terrible everything in the neighborhood is, and Meatball introduces him to a terrified Nikki by licking her face! Rebecca had hoped that she might find a friend in her new neighbor, since her former best friend Hailey has decided she'd rather hang out with drama club members, but clearly this is not going to work. Nikki doesn't talk much to her old friends, since she can't afford to let them know her lies, so feels lonely. She has also told cute neighbor Emilio, within Rebeccca's hearing, that her father has passed away. The two find a reason to spend time together after Hailey returns a concert ticket and Rebecca asks Nikki to go with her, and when they both need money. Rebecca wants to fund a better bat mitzvah celebration than her father can afford, in order to impress her crush, Josh, and Nikki needs to repay $300 that she has stolen from the church collection plate and spent on a sweater that can't be returned. The two try dog walking and babysitting, with disastrous results, and finally settle on a lemonade and cookie stand. This brings in some money, but doesn't solve all of the girls' problems. When Rebecca needs help studying the Torah, Nikki thinks she's being helpful in contacting Josh for help, since Rebecca has hinted that Josh is her boyfriend. This doesn't end as badly as it could have... at first. Rebecca is glad of the help, and the girls are finally honest with each other, but Rebecca is devastated that Nikki would lie about her father being dead when he wasn't. Will the two girls be able to solve their personal problems and make amends?
Strengths: Wow. I didn't realize how much more tween lying we need in books until I read this. Being in middle school is hard, and one way to cope is to create a believable fiction about one's circumstances. This isn't discussed much, but is such a powerful idea. Both Rebecca and Nikki are a little embarrassed by their economic situation, and it's fascinating to watch how they handle it. Lack of impulse control at this age leads to so many bad choices, so stealing, lying, and other spur of the moment decisions are completely realistic. Bring in a couple of cute boys, and of COURSE Nikki will make up a story about her father being dead rather than admit that he lives across the country with his new family, and she hasn't seen him since she was young. The other part of this that I really enjoyed was the fact that the girls' parents thought they would be friends right away, when they were clearly different people. It made sense that they eventually became friends, but it was by no means a smooth process. Another unique factor to this story is that both girls are religious. Nikki and her mother travel across town to attend their old church, and eventually find a new church home. This doesn't come up in middle grade fiction as much as it should; I was very invested in my church youth group in middle school. The religious details weren't overwhelming, but were a good part of each girl's life. Friend drama, light romance, money making plans, and themes of personal identity; all of these things combine to make a delicious and unexpected cookie of a book (and there are cookie recipes at the end!).
Weaknesses: I always have trouble believing that any middle school girls know about designer clothes are would wear silk, but it does add an interesting element to Nikki's personality. My biggest complaint is that the recipe for quadruple chocolate decadence cookies is not included. I really want to know how I can get FOUR different kinds of chocolate into a cookie.
What I really think: It's interesting to see Garfinkle (whose Young Adult books Storky and Stuck in the 70s I read years ago) and April Henry (whose upper middle grade/young Adult mysteries are super popular in my library) team up to write a solidly middle grade book exploring what it means to be true to oneself and connect with others. I enjoyed this story a lot, and especially appreciated the portrayal of economic struggle from a tween point of view.
Strengths: Wow. I didn't realize how much more tween lying we need in books until I read this. Being in middle school is hard, and one way to cope is to create a believable fiction about one's circumstances. This isn't discussed much, but is such a powerful idea. Both Rebecca and Nikki are a little embarrassed by their economic situation, and it's fascinating to watch how they handle it. Lack of impulse control at this age leads to so many bad choices, so stealing, lying, and other spur of the moment decisions are completely realistic. Bring in a couple of cute boys, and of COURSE Nikki will make up a story about her father being dead rather than admit that he lives across the country with his new family, and she hasn't seen him since she was young. The other part of this that I really enjoyed was the fact that the girls' parents thought they would be friends right away, when they were clearly different people. It made sense that they eventually became friends, but it was by no means a smooth process. Another unique factor to this story is that both girls are religious. Nikki and her mother travel across town to attend their old church, and eventually find a new church home. This doesn't come up in middle grade fiction as much as it should; I was very invested in my church youth group in middle school. The religious details weren't overwhelming, but were a good part of each girl's life. Friend drama, light romance, money making plans, and themes of personal identity; all of these things combine to make a delicious and unexpected cookie of a book (and there are cookie recipes at the end!).
Weaknesses: I always have trouble believing that any middle school girls know about designer clothes are would wear silk, but it does add an interesting element to Nikki's personality. My biggest complaint is that the recipe for quadruple chocolate decadence cookies is not included. I really want to know how I can get FOUR different kinds of chocolate into a cookie.
What I really think: It's interesting to see Garfinkle (whose Young Adult books Storky and Stuck in the 70s I read years ago) and April Henry (whose upper middle grade/young Adult mysteries are super popular in my library) team up to write a solidly middle grade book exploring what it means to be true to oneself and connect with others. I enjoyed this story a lot, and especially appreciated the portrayal of economic struggle from a tween point of view.
February 3, 2026 by Penguin Workshop
Copy provided by the publisher
We have had an advisory period in my school for several years now, and the activities that are provided focus a lot on goal setting and academic focus. I am constantly surprised as to how completely unmotivated many of my students are. They have no goals for the school year, and haven't really thought about life beyond high school. Perhaps because my parents were both educators, I always had a list of Things To Be Done and had clear career goals even in sixth grade. Well, the dentist thing didn't really pan out, but I always had an idea that I needed to work towards my future.
Nafousi's Manifest for Kids provides much needed support in learning how to embrace life rather than just floating through it. It starts with a very modern look at understanding emotions, and offers good tips with how to deal with feelings like fear, worry, and guilt. This was hard for me as a 60 year old to fully embrace, since my mother was a firm believer that all emotions should be squashed and never shared with others, but this generational difference makes this a book that older caretakers should read before handing to tweens, so that we can understand the more modern approaches to these topics.
I've seen a lack of confidence in many of my students; as much as shame shaped my childhood, I was always told that I could do anything I set my mind to. Today's tweens need more details about how to believe in themselves, and the chapter on Confidence and Self-Belief is very information. I love that it talks about doing what makes you happy, but also about the importance of being kind to others.
Gratitude is sometimes hard to come by, so the advice to focus on what one has, rather than what one doesn't have is a great place to start. I liked the lists that this gave, and there is a short space for the reader to write down things for which to be grateful. There's some helpful rephrasing (I especially liked turning "I'm bored." into "I'm going to find something to do."). I'm a big proponent of thanking people, and this also has information about the harm of comparing ourselves to others, and of spending too much time on social media. Of course, there are entire books surrounding that slippery slope.
The final chapter has some great step-by-step tips on goal setting that will be helpful. These rely more heavily on things like vision boards and visualization than the ubiquitous SMART goals we hear about at school, but it's good to get a different viewpoint on things.
The last half of the book is a guided journal, so this wouldn't be a great book for a school library. This journal is undated, but has the days of the week at the top. I was a little surprised that the prompts were the same on all of the pages. They rely heavily on the "emotional toolbox" that was talked about at the beginning of the book, and end with saying "I believe in myself" as an affirmation.
Several years ago, I reviewed a similar journal (the name of which I can't for the life of me recall), and gave it to one of my students who was struggling with some family and personal issues. She seemed to think it helped her a lot, and gave her some information on how to deal with various situations that people in her life had not helped her with. This would make a good gift for a middle school student struggling to find self-regulation or motivational strategies, and is similar to Parker's Strong Is the New Pretty: A Guided Journal for Girls or Carter, Chamblee, Walthall's I Am, I Can, I Will: A Guided Journal of Self-Discovery for Black Girls.
It's amazing how many books one can read when there are FIVE snow days in a row!
No comments:
Post a Comment