Book Review: The Usual Suspects by Maurice Broaddus

First Paragraph(s): Life is all about timing.
Once the homeroom bell rings at 8:15 a.m., there'll be a five-minute lag before students are marched to the auditorium to gather for morning assembly. Nehemiah Caldwell and I get there before any administration types do. We slide under the curtain beneath the stage and crawl over to the stereo cart.
This is going to be epic.
"You got it?" Nehemiah asks.
I pat my pocket. "Yeah. You got what you need?"
"I'm like a Boy Scout up in this mug."

Esteemed Reader, if you check in with the blog regularly, you know I don't really write reviews that often anymore (note, I'm calling them "reviews" these days and not my "book of the week"). I'm still reading just as much as I ever was, but the time to actually sit down and write a thing that requires greater focus than an email has become much harder to come by now that I'm living with a 5-year-old Little Ninja. 

If I can sit and concentrate for a period greater than an hour, which these reviews require, I really need to get my own books written. So know that my sitting down to write this review at all means I really love this book and I want people to know it exists. I may not review another book this year, but something as awesome as Maurice Broaddus' first middle grade novel doesn't come along every day.

Full disclosure: Maurice is a friend and one of the most amazing writers I know (and I know a lot of amazing writers). You can hear our first ever conversation in the video below when we were on an author panel together. I liked Maurice from the start. He's a horror author who also writes middle grade and science fiction and who also occasionally teaches at the Indiana Writers Center. And he gives me great advice most every time I see him.

Lots of great things have been happening for Maurice. He's currently featured in Kirkus, where he recently received a starred-review. He's got multiple books out now and has had some high-profile book deals, so we can look forward to more of his excellent writing in the near future. And he's appearing in lots of amazing venues. Wouldn't surprise me if one day Maurice is painted on a building in Indianapolis just like Kurt Vonnegut. And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Sometimes publishing can seem random and unfair. Probably because it's often random and unfair:) But occasionally, the universe lines up and things work out for someone genuinely deserving. When that happens, it restores faith to see hard work and dedication rewarded.

And few are dedicated as Maurice Broaddus. I've seen him in writing mode and his laser focus is intimidating. Maurice is also a very gifted social organizer, which is a superpower in a writer:) He hosts multiple events to promote writers and writing in the Indianapolis area, including a conference that takes place partly in his home. Maurice believes deeply in the written word and in creating a community of Indiana writers. The world is a far better place because Maurice Broaddus is in it and he's the sort of writer I want to be when I grow up.

I can very much hear Maurice's voice in The Usual Suspects as his essence is all through it. I'm thrilled that this book now exists and that it comes from my beloved Hoosier state. Esteemed Reader, get yourself a copy of The Usual Suspects and prepare for a wonderful read. Request it from your librarians and if you're a teacher, get a copy for your classroom.

This book is a middle grade crime thriller that is always engaging and never pedantic, beginning with the crime itself. This is isn't the case of the missing school trophy or a cookie caper. Broaddus is writing about some real stuff: a gun has been found in a park near school where our heroes hang out with other kids and everyone's a suspect... except that mostly the teachers suspect Thelonius Mitchell and his friends because they're, wait for it, the usual suspects. To clear their name, Thelonius and his friends must discover the true culprit (it's probably Keyser Soze).

Like the best Elmore Leonard fiction, which the author makes clear in his notes he's emulating, The Usual Suspects is all about a classic crime set up populated by compelling characters, beginning with our main character, Thelonius Mitchell:

So I'm back in the principal's office once again. Due to "my escalating antics" I'm here a lot. Some teachers float the idea that I have oppositional defiant disorder (sometimes I think they just say that about kids who say no to whenever adults tell them to do something, in which case, I have a severe case of it, as does every middle schooler I know). Some keep trying to say that I have bipolar disorder (because my shnanigans are so over-the-top). None of them is a doctor and just wants to sweep me and my issues under the rug. Moms scheduled an exam for me to get tested, but with our insurance, it's over a month out. Until then, I have to spend the rest of the quarter in the Special Ed room.

Thelonius is clever and insightful. He's good at understanding relationship dynamics and how to manipulate them, yet he's far from a criminal mastermind:


Whenever I try to polish my voice like Pierce, I always sound like a con artist on the prowl. Adults grow suspicious and know I am up to something, but they have no proof and need to see whatever I am up to play out. I might as well be a thief sending a note daring the cops to stop me from robbing a joint.

Thelonius is our perspective character, naturally, as this is a story told in the first person present tense, but my favorite character is his friend, Nehemiah Caldwell. Nehemiah also has some issues, including a whole lot of pent up anger, but he made me smile in most every scene he's in. Everyone agrees that Nehemiah couldn't have been the one to leave the gun in the park because if he'd had a gun, he'd have waved it at everyone. Also, Nehemiah's distrust of Teddy Grahams might be my favorite character detail in the book:

Nehemiah bounces his Teddy Grahams package off my chest. He hates them because he "never trusts anything that smiles all the time."

There are a lot of excellent characters populating this story. We're not going to go through each of them one by one, but I would mention just a few more. We'll talk about Marcel in a moment, but first I want to talk about the teachers in this book. Thelonius knows better than to trust any of them, even Mr. Blackmon, who appears to be the most trustworthy. After all, T tells us, "Lying to adults is how we breathe."

But Thelonius does know how to work his teachers: Teachers are like people: if you annoy them, by the time you need something they'll automatically say no just to spite you. Do what they want or make their job easier, they are quick to reward you.

The teachers in this story aren't monolithic villains. In fact, Broaddus goes out of his way to show that in some ways, they're as trapped by the social system of control put in place as the boys are. But they do demonstrate villainous qualities on occasion:

Mrs. Horner rarely comes at things directly. She keeps things vague, saying that she doesn't want to limit our creativity. It's more likely that she wants us to accidentally tell on ourselves.

Mrs. Fitzerald has a swagger to her. A bit of a gangster vibe. She wanders the halls with a beaming smile, but she has a resting teacher face with her eyes narrow like unflinching lasers.

The teachers range from honestly trying to make a positive impact in their students' lives to completely disengaged (one of them is on her phone checking Facebook all day) to outright hostile toward the students and our heroes. Broaddus' observations about teachers are probably based on his years of experience working in education, and that honest look at teacher student dynamics is one of the strongest aspects of The Usual Suspects.

There's one other character readers are going to love and no review would be complete without mentioning her:

Her dad, a black dude, is a scientist who often visits her class to talk about his work. Her mom, a white lady, is the president of the PTA who also bakes a mean batch of brownies come school fund-raising season. If Marcel came from money, she never acted like it. Marcel always received straight A's. By all reports, she was the best-behaved kid in the class. But I know better. The quiet ones are the ones everyone really has to watch out for. You see, an obvious stickup thug might get a wallet or two. Put them in bankers' suits and they were robbing folks for millions on Wall Street.
Marcel was strictly Wall Street.

Marcel is a cool customer. I can't tell you a whole lot about her without spoiling some specific plot details, but readers are going to find her fascinating. And more interesting to me at this moment is the first two lines of her description, which are about her parents. To the best of my recollection, Marcel's mom is the first "white lady" in the story.

Not every character's race is specified, but most of the character's who's coloring is mentioned are described as having skin "the shade of sunbaked cinnamon," or "the color of rich sepia," or "the complexion of milk with a dab of butter in it." The effect of this is that "not white" becomes the readers' default assumption about which race each character is, a refreshing change of pace, especially for a middle grade novel coming out of Indiana (former home of the head of the Klan not nearly long enough ago).

The Usual Suspects isn't about race, exactly, but it's not not about race. Just like it's not strictly about kids with special needs, but it's not not about them: 

Moms explained what she has, something about being on the autism spectrum. I hear so many labels placed on me and my friends, I tune them out. 

On its surface, The Usual Suspects is a fun middle grade crime novel with memorable characters and a quality mystery to be solved. Esteemed Readers looking for a good story well told will absolutely find it here and will join me in hoping Maurice Broaddus publishes more middle grade novels right away. We need as many of them as we can get.

But The Usual Suspects is really about multiple intersecting social dynamics and how they can trap and label all of us, not just the kids perceived as troublemakers, but also their teachers, their parents, other children in the neighborhood, and so on. Because all of us have assumptions made about us based on the broad categories society has placed us in. All of us are suspect.

Do yourself a favor, Esteemed Reader, and get yourself a copy of The Usual Suspects. It's themes are universal and you will be captivated by Broaddus' style and structure and his ability to present authentic characters in relatable situations.

More, if there's a problem child in you life, they need to read this book. I wish this book had been around when I was an adolescent and automatically suspected of wrongdoing by some of my teachers (I wasn't always a fine, upstanding Ninja). I don't know that it would've necessarily changed much for me (young me was pretty committed to being troublesome), but sometimes it's enough to know that someone else understands the experience and can relate. 

As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from The Usual Suspects:

I catch myself as my hand moves to my chest to protest my innocence. That kind of theatricality would be insulting to both of us.

That girl can't find a maternal bone in a cemetery of mothers.

"I'm better than his momma. I'm actually here." Moms lets that line sit in everyone's ear for a minute, like she wants it to travel the neighborhood, before she continues. 

Some still go on about the hottest Pokemon cards. They are so sixth grade.

Twon knocks over another chair like Superman casually tossing a tank.

One kid lingers by the pencil sharpener opposite from us. Marquees Neal. "Kutter" to (what few people he called) his friends. His hair is a crown of twists, nesting baby snakes poised to strike. His eyes seem perpetually narrowed, like jagged scars.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own. 

Book Review: A BOY CALLED BAT by Elana K Arnold

First Paragraph(s): Bixby Alexander Tam stared into the refrigerator, trying to decide what to eat. He knew that the longer he took, the more energy he was wasting, and Bixby Alexander Tam did not like to waste energy. But he also didn’t like to eat leftovers, or cheese that had to be sliced, or any of the yogurt flavors in the fridge. 
“Bat, close the refrigerator door!” yelled his sister, Janie, from the kitchen table, where she sat cutting out pictures from a pile of old magazines. Janie, he was sure, had eaten all the lemon and vanilla yogurts. And she knew he only liked the creamy ones, not the fruit-on-the-bottom kind. 
“Bat” was what almost everyone called Bixby Alexander Tam, for a couple of reasons: first, because the initials of his name—B, A, and T—spelled Bat. 
But there were maybe other reasons. Bat’s sensitive hearing, for one. He didn’t like loud sounds. What was so unusual about that? And if Janie’s old earmuffs happened to make an outstanding muffling device, was it that funny if he liked to wear them? 
There was also the way he sometimes flapped his hands, when he was nervous or excited or thinking about something interesting. Some of the kids at school seemed to think that was hilarious. And, of course, bats have wings, which they flap. 
So, between the initials and the earmuffs and the hand flapping, the nickname had stuck. 
And, truthfully, Bat didn’t mind. Animals were his very favorite thing. Better even than vanilla yogurt.

Esteemed Reader, I don't know if I can fully express to you just how truly and deeply I love this book. I know, I know, I love every book I review and I tell you to read all of them. Well, honestly I do love most of them and you should read them.

I'm not apologizing for liking too many books. I haven't run this free blog about middle grade fiction for all these years because I don't love middle grade books. Speaking of which, this blog has now spawned a YouTube channel and a podcast, which you should totally check out. I'm super excited about it.

Esteemed Reader, I really, really, REALLY love A Boy Called Bat. I love it so much I've read it multiple times this year and cried most every time. I'll try to make it through this review without crying, but I probably won't. Some books find you when you most need to read them, and this book found me. 

If Elana K Arnold ever came on my podcast, I expect my questions for her would be mostly, "Why are you so awesome?" and "How did you write the exact book my heart most needed?" and "Magic writer lady, I love you." After that, I imagine, would follow a period of extremely tense and awkward silence. So perhaps it's better that Elana K Arnold will be here to provide written answers for the 7 Questions on Thursday:)

And that will be it for 2018. I can't top an interview with Elana K Arnold, so we may as well call it a year. And then January 1st I'll do my usual year in retrospect post and we'll have some fabulous new guests on the podcast/TV show thingee, some swell guest posts, and I'll even publish some new middle grade books. It will be good times.

And that's it's. You can skip the review part of this if you want and just go buy your copy of the book. What follows is mostly gushing for one of my most favorite things.

As the first paragraph of A Boy Called Bat makes clear, Bixby Alexander Tam is not a neurotypical protagonist. During my discussion with Mary Kole, she was adamant that the key to hooking a middle grade reader is providing an interesting character. I can't think of a better example of this principal in action than in the book's opening above. 

Some will say this is a book about autism, and certainly it's a good book to prompt a discussion about autism. I would say this is a book about love (as in I LOVE it so much), but more on that momentarily. Without question, this is a book that should be read aloud in every classroom in the country as it's an excellent guide to understand the neuro-diverse people living among us. 

It is said that if you've met someone with autism, you've met one person with autism, as the spectrum is vast. I have no doubt some of you reading this and some of us writing it are somewhere on the spectrum.

Bat isn't just a kid with autism, he's Bat, and by the end of Arnold's story, you will love him because he's the one and only Bat, not the autistic kid. Although, undeniably, Bat sees the world differently than other children and is particularly bad at picking up on social ques that are obvious to everyone else:

Mr. Grayson came over. He was wearing his bright-orange tennis shoes today. Bat liked it when he wore those shoes. It was like he was wearing suns on his feet. 
“What’s the problem, friends?” he asked. 
“Bat embarrassed Lucca,” Israel said, really loudly, making Bat wish he had his earmuffs. They were in his backpack, on his back. 
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to embarrass her, did you, Bat?” asked Mr. Grayson. There were sixteen eyelets on each of his shoes, Bat counted. Eight on the left side, eight on the right side. That made thirty-two eyelets. 
“Bat, can you look up at my face?” Mr. Grayson asked. Bat shook his head. Thirty-two eyelets. His own shoes had half as many. Sixteen eyelets, four on each side of each shoe. 
Mr. Grayson sighed. “Okay, Bat, go sit at your table.” 
Bat wondered if anyone in the class had more eyelets in their shoes than Mr. Grayson. He kept his eyes on shoes as he walked through the classroom. Nope. No one did.

Perhaps the greatest feat Elana K Arnold pulls off in A Boy Called Bat, and she pulls off several, is that she creates in Bat a character who is completely believable and empathetic in every way. Bat does some things during the course of the story that are annoying and obnoxious and it's not hard to understand why the people surrounding Bat become impatient with him.

But for all that, the reader will see the world from Bat's perspective and understand his side of things. We will root for Bat and want to see how he handles usually simple situations with his unusually complicated mind. We will look forward to future stories in this series.  

Arnold's book is an incredible exercise in empathy that works so very well in part because its plot is deceptively simple. But don't let Arnold's mastery of craft fool you. This story only seems simple because it's so impeccably well constructed that its reading is effortless, but I'm certain its creation was anything but. I'd love to know how many drafts Arnold went through to nail every aspect of this story, and she does have to nail them all to give her readers the emotional payoff she's building toward.

A Boy Called Bat is a love story, one that works on multiple levels. But at it's simplest, most basic level, this is the story of a boy and his love for a skunk:

“Is she okay?” Janie asked. 
“I wish I could say she is,” Mom answered. “I wasn’t able to save the mother, or the other baby kits. Only this one lived. I was able to check the mother for diseases, though, and luckily she wasn’t sick, which is a good sign the kit isn’t sick, either.” 
“That’s awesome,” Bat said. 
“Bat!” said Janie, loud and sharp. The kit twitched and shifted, scared by Janie’s voice. “How can you say it’s awesome? The mom died! The other babies died!” 
Bat didn’t mean that it was awesome that the other skunks had died. Of course that wasn’t awesome. He’d meant that it was awesome that this kit had lived. 
But it wasn’t worth it to try to explain to Janie what he’d meant. She usually misunderstood Bat. Most everyone did. 
“Can I?” Bat reached out for the kit, wanting so badly to hold him that his fingers twitched. 
“We can’t keep him,” Mom warned. “There’s a wild animal rescue center that we can give him to in about a month, but they’re too busy to take him just yet. So we can help him get bigger and stronger before we hand him over to the experts. They’ll raise him until he’s ready to be released into the wild, when he’s about five months old.” Then she passed the tiny kit, wrapped in towels, into Bat’s arms.

You'd have to be made of stone not to root for a lonely boy who finds love for a skunk. And we see Bat come to life and get motivated by this new love as surely as any protagonist in a more traditional love story. He researches skunks, emails a leading skunk expert, and schemes to convince his mother to allow him to keep Thor, the skunk kit, forever.

There's plenty of opposition for Bat to overcome, the most chief obstacle being his own neuro-diverse self. Can he stay focused on the baby skunk long term or will he forget his pet and add a burden to his single mother veterinarian mom who already has her hands full with the sometimes challenging rearing of Bat himself. Bat never wavers in his conviction that he should be the one to take of Thor, but those around him have understandable concerns.

The plot itself will not surprise any regular middle grade readers, but that's not the point. In my fiction workshops, I've taught that the secret to a good story is either a complex plot with a relatable character, or a simple plot with a complex character. A Boy Called Bat is an excellent example of the later.

But this is a book that works on multiple levels and though Bat and Thor are always front and center, Arnold deftly creates a slew of three-dimensional characters surrounding them, each personally impacted by Bat's growth as a person capable of expressing love. The character who most moved me was not Bat, but Bat's mother, who has a wonderful moment at the end of the story I won't spoil, but I could hardly read it because my vision was so clouded by tears of happiness for her and for Bat.

Although Arnold never flat out states the significance of Bat's connection to Thor, she hints that some of it is wrapped up in his feelings regarding his parents divorce--for it's his weekends at his father's apartment that take him away from his beloved skunk. And there's a boy in Thor's class who might like to be Bat's friend. Bat might not be ready to be a friend... although if he can feel deeply for a skunk, maybe anything is possible.

A Boy Called Bat is a book about love, the characters who love Bat and make his dream possible. But more, it's about the people Bat loves, even if he doesn't express that love conventionally:

Bat loved braiding Janie’s hair, even though he usually wasn’t very good at hand things. He liked the feeling of the damp, heavy hair; he liked organizing it into a series of smaller, neatly contained braids; he liked feeling close to Janie like this, by helping her and touching her, without having to have a big conversation that might turn into a fight. 
Getting along with people was hard for Bat. Figuring out what they meant when they said something, or when they made certain faces at him . . . People were complicated. But braiding was easy.

If I made the laws of the world, I'd insist a copy of A Boy Called Bat be made available in every pediatrician's office. Parents who's children have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum need to read this book. Siblings of such children and their classmates need to read this book. Really, everyone needs to read this book, and I so glad it was available for me to read when I needed it.

A Boy Called Bat is a modern classic and should be read by everyone. Do not miss this story and keep tissues close at hand as you read it. I love it so much and I'm so happy to share it with you, Esteemed Reader.

As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from A Boy Called Bat:

“Hi, Bat,” Israel said. “Do you think it’ll rain?” 
“Maybe,” said Bat. “Well, eventually, yes, but today, maybe.”

“Be careful, sport,” said Dad, which was a dumb thing to say because the hot chocolate was already spilled and being careful now wouldn’t unspill it.

Her hair was damp from the shower, and she was wearing her favorite pajamas, the ones with all the unicorns. Each unicorn was doing something different; one rocked out with a guitar, another was reading a book, another wore a chef’s hat and was flipping eggs in a pan. The only thing they had in common was that they were all unicorns. 
“Janie, did you know that a herd of unicorns is called a blessing?” Bat asked. 
“Yes, Bat, of course I know that. Every time I wear these pajamas you tell me that.” 
“I didn’t know if you remembered,” Bat said.

As Thor had his breakfast, the sky turned violet and pink, then orangey red. The tree’s trunk lightened from black to brown and its leaves transformed to green. The first birds called louder, waking up their friends, and they became a chorus of song.

The Sugar Shack was an exceptional candy store. It had bins full of M&M’s separated into colors, so if you wanted exactly eleven greens and eleven blues, but no yellows, reds, or oranges (as Bat did), you could get exactly that.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own. 

Book Review: THE ASSASSINATION OF BRANGWAIN SPURGE by M.T. Anderson

First Paragraph(s): From the Desk of Lord Ysoret Clivers The Royal Order of the Clean Hand Realm of Elfland
My Dear Friend,
You'll never believe who I shot out of a crossbow today. Old Weedy Spurge from school--"the Weed."
We shot him into the dark heart of the kingdom of the goblins around noon.
Funny thing. I hadn't given the Weed a thought for ages and ages. At school, he was a bit of a drip. You remember. Shrimpy little chap. Arms wobbly like kelp. Fishy sort of face. Terrible at the joust. Awful at hunting, too. Always getting bit by the elf-hounds. Frightened all the time. He walked around with his head hunched down on that scrawny little neck like he was about to be punched. Absolutely weedy, and named "Spurge," which is a weed. Hence, just called "the Weed," as you remember. And I didn't think about him for thirty years.
Well, imagine my gobsmacked surprise when one of the king's ministers told me they needed a historian to visit the goblin court of Ghorg the Evil One. Gave me a list to chose from. And there was his name, three down: Brangwain Spurge.

I've got a fun one for you this week, Esteemed Reader. Did you know "Esteemed Reader" would be a dire insult in goblin culture? It totally would. A compliment would be to address you as "Despised Illiterate." Boom. I'm totally woke to goblin life and I'm going to hit you with some mad knowledge this post. 

M.T. Anderson will be here on Wednesday to face The 7 Questions and you know that's going to be awesome, so make sure you come back for that. I was a big fan of his YA dystopian novel, Feed, and when I first read the description of The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, I was expecting something similar, but with fantasy elements.

That's not what this book is, at all, and it's a pleasure to discover a skilled writer capable of successfully telling a very different type of story while still making it feel like an M.T. Anderson novel. My favorite writers excel in multiple genres and I hope to do so one day myself (but first I'd have to excel in a single genre, ha, ha--see, goblin compliments to myself cause I'm woke).

This is one book where I'd recommend reading the paper edition rather an ebook, which is what I did, and the ARC formatting was not well done. I assume the official ebook is better put together, but really, you're going to want to hold this one in your hands. The wonderful illustrations by Eugene Yelchin do a lot of the storytelling, so much so that this is in part a graphic novel.

For that reason, I'm going to include a few snippets of Mr. Yelchin's work as well as Mr. Anderson's prose throughout this review to give you a full sense of the book:

The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge is a very funny comic novel that has some political overtones, but nothing too heavy handed. And there's no direct one-to-one parallels, so don't bother trying to figure out which shelled goblin without a soul or a shred of patriotism is a metaphorical stand-in for Mitch McConnell. 

I don't know about you, Despised Illiterate, but I've had enough of politics recently (although, make sure you're registered to vote as we need everybody who likes books and thinking to vote this November). I'd prefer to focus on the issues of Elf V. Goblin: Dawn of Spurge-st. And that's mostly what Anderson does.

Brangwain Spurge is an elfin historian who's catapulted into goblin territory (probably less hassle than plane travel) to stay for a time with goblin archivist Werfel. Their hope is to improve relations between the long warring species, despite the fact that they both have pointed ears (it's a recurring joke in the book). Improving relations is their official story, anyway. More on that momentarily.

The two do their best to accommodate each other, but naturally the scholarly fellows see the world very differently:

"Why do you think it is of goblin make, if it was under the palace of the elves?"
"We think it must be from a thousand years ago when the forests were ruled by your people, before you yielded them up to us."
Werfel murmured, "Before they were taken from us, yes."
Spurge nodded. "Yes, before you lost them in fair battle."

Much of the comedy through the first act comes from Werfel showing off bits of goblin culture, with which Spurge is largely unimpressed:

I'll try to show him that goblins can be fun! Werfel thought, so during a furious thunderstom he took Spurge out on the streets to watch the children jumping from rooftop to rooftop with their elaborate metal wands, tying to catch lightning bolts.

Magister Spurge did no seem much more pleased by the solemn Museum of Eminent Skins. He did not take any interest in the discarded skins of famous goblin heroes and actors, despite all of the interesting dioramas. At the end of the tour, he did not even want to pet the Slough of Vertigrin the Wise for good luck.

During my favorite sequence, Werfel takes Spurge to a goblin opera which plays for more than twenty hours. Around hour six, Spurge sneaks off and I've been thinking about this next passage of Werfel trying to find the elf since I first read it: 

He crouched over the privy and looked down. Someone could easily crawl out the hole and jump down into the street below. Spurge must be off spying.
He stuck his head through the hole and and peered up and down the alley. At the far end of the street, there were signs for various posh businesses: an optician, a doctor, a kitchenware boutique, a maker of ladies' fine opera gloves. But no sign of anyone. 
He was furious. Spurge had betrayed his trust. When he looked up from the toilet, shifting on his knees, he saw a wealthy goblin woman draped in strings of pearls glaring at him.
"Just vomiting, madam," he apologized. "That shrieking harpy who's playing Blulinda really should not be singing a solo role." He stood up and, with dignity, left the privy.

So, do the goblin's just yell "look out below" before doing their business to the street beneath? Do the goblins below have umbrellas, or do they just accept the downpour as part of the price of living in the city? I have so many questions about goblin toilets. I've been wondering about the practicality of living in a world with such toilets for a couple weeks now. I keep thinking I'm done contemplating such juvenile matters, and then questions come creeping back into my brain at odd moments.

Alas, Spuge is a pawn in a larger game. He's been tasked with bringing a gift to the goblin king. Unbeknownst to him, the gift is actually a brilliantly described MacGuffin:

As you know, the gift we sent, the carved gemstone, is not simply an artifact of ye olden days. It is also a death-dealing device. Didn't used to be. It was just a pretty gemstone when they dug it up in Your Majesty's wading pool. But before we sent it, our crack team of wizards imbued it with the power, when activated, to open a hole in the world and destroy everything around it out of time and space and into--well, I don't know, Your Maj, because I was never frightfully good at science, but, you know, the Great Nothing or some such. Get some wizards to explain it.

Incidentally, the fellow providing this exposition as well as the exposition in the opening paragraph and throughout the book is Ysoret Clivers, Lord Spymaster, Earl of Lunesse, Order of the Clean Hand. His letters to the king are quite amusing as he and the king start out as best buds who golf together and their relationship deteriorates drastically due to Spurge's antics and unknowing failures to destroy the goblin's leader. 

This is a fun way to deliver exposition and the interplay between Ysoret and the elfin king who begins chopping off his fingers with each failure to give him a truly clean hand reminded me of the--going to date myself here--bickering PA anouncers in the movie Airplane! If you recall the tone of that comedy, or perhaps the tone of The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, that's sort of treat you're in for with The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge.

This is an absurd comedy. Laughs are the top priority and they are abundant. But if you're hoping to be convinced of a believable world of goblins and elves, this isn't that story. Me, I always loved R.A. Salvatore's The Dark Elf trilogy for that sort of nerdy fun. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge is a different sort of nerdy fun. 

Not only is the interplay of these narrating letters between Ysoret and the king amusing on its own, it's thematically relevant. Without spoiling, our odd couple of elf and goblin are about to learn an important lesson that applies to both their kingdoms and our own as well:

"You cannot trust the wealthy and powerful."
"I thought I would be useful," wept Spurge. "I thought I could be different than I was. I thought I could be one of them."
"You were useful," said Werfel. "Buy just because you're useful to the wealthy doesn't mean they'll reward you. It just means they'll use you."

But this isn't a book about messages and politics so much as it's a book about the fun of learning the outlandish rules of a made-up world. M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin want to show their readers a good time, and in this aim they are successful.

I particluarly loved Werfel's pet, Skardebek, or Becky for short, who screeches at night. But what is Becky:

It was just Skardebek, rubbing his cheek with her tentacles.

The icthyod mewled.

Skardebek screeched and darted forward to bite the intruder. Werfel reached up and grabbed her tail just in time. 

Werfel was still busy trying to hold Skardebek back as she flapped and struggled.

Trying to imagine how Skardebek functions is fun, and that's what this book is. Just a whole lot of fun. Treat yourself, Despised Illiterate, and laugh out loud at this buddy comedy that never takes itself too seriously.

And don't miss author M.T. Anderso's interview on Wednesday. As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from The Assassination of Branwain Spurge:

Skardebek fluttered softly around the room's rafters like an unsettled thought.

"You'll never hear interesting stories if you don't ask questions. And there are interesting stories everywhere. Even the most boring person has one interesting story."

"You cannot simply bang on the door of an elfin emissary while he does his business! For the elves, all aspects of life are an art. Even on the toilet, they think of nothing but beauty and elegance. Knocking on the door would be like hurling a fry-pan at a great artist painting a masterpiece of a sunset on distant hills."

"There is no reason to keep sitting here like a couple of grapefruits rotted to the shelf."

The vast plain was hairy with dead grasses.

The towering figure roared: a creature so large that a man could have bathed in the soupy spittle of its mouth and sat curled up in the chambers of its heart.

"I have so many... so many secrets I could tell Ghohg. About the kingdom of the elves. And the Order of the Clean Hand. do you know of the Order? Top secret, of course, but I know it all."
"You're disgusting," said Regibald. "Willing to sell out your own country just to save your life."
This irritated Spurge. "As it happens," he snapped, "I was going to lie to you anyway."

It seemed unfair that his one chance at being alive should end so stupidly.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own. 

Book Review: ZORA AND ME: THE CURSED GROUND by T. R. Simon

First Paragraph(s): There are two kinds of memory. One is the ordinary kind, rooted in things that happened, people you knew, and places you went. I remember my father this way: laughing, picking me up, singing lullabies in his gentle bass. I see him swinging my mother in a half circle, the hem of her blue skirt flying up to show the rough white thread she used for mending, like a bed of stars along a ridge.
The second kind of memory is rooted in the things you live with, the land you live on, the history of where you belong. You tend not to notice it, much less think about it, but it seeps into you, grows its long roots down into the richest soil of your living mind. Because most of us pay this second kind of memory no mind, the people who do talk about it seem to us superstitious or even crazy. But they aren't. The power of that memory is equal to any of the memories we make ourselves, because it represents our collective being, the soul of a place.
After losing my father, after nursing myself to sleep nights on end with glimpses of the past with him, I was well enough acquainted with the first kind of memory. But by twelve I was still too young to pay much mind to the memories held by the town we lived in, by Eatonville itself. 
That all changed the night we found Mr. Polk, his blood soaking into the earth. When I look back on that time I wonder how it had never occurred to me that Eatonville, America's first incorporated colored town, might have a history that stretched back beyond its name and my twelve years. How could I have thought our town began with Teddy, Zora, and me, that it had just opened into the infinite present of our young lives? Turned out we were living out Eatonville's history as blindly as pawns in a century-old chess game. We were no more new or free than the land itself, but like all young people, we confused our youth with beginning and our experience with knowledge. It wasn't until that night--when we heard the town mute speak to the town conjure woman--that Zora and I began to forge a real connection with the land, a connection that let us know ourselves through a past we hadn't lived but was inside us all the same.'

Take note of the length of the passage above, Esteemed Reader. I had to retype the whole thing (so any copy-editing errors in the passages are mine). You better believe I'm not working my fingers that hard without a reason. I believe that opening as presented is a thesis, or at least a preliminary argument for the book to follow. More on that in a moment.

I've been ninja-ing for a while, and if this is your first visit to the blog, where've you been? I've been here this whole time waiting for you. Sorry, Esteemed Reader, I lost my train of thought because some of you ticked me off by not reading my other reviews, but what I meant to say was  I've read a lot of middle grade books over the years, and I don't think I've read anything quite like this week's book before.

However this book should be classified, I like it. A lot. And you will too. If you don't want to be spoiled going in, put this review aside and go buy your copy. If you're not yet convinced, continue reading.

Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground is not quite a young adult novel, but it's definitely upper-age middle grade. Alas, there just isn't a kid-friendly way to discuss slavery without pretending slavery was something less horrible than what it was (don't do this, even if you're writing a text book in a church in Texas). 

Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground is not quite a historical accounting, even though it's drawn from historical events and features a fictionalized version of a Zora Neale Hurston. It's more of a story than an essay, but the book definitely has a formal message. It's a sequel, but I don't think you need to have read the first book to enjoy this one.

T. R. Simon catches up quickly:

I was staying with Zora's family for the week while my mama tended her employer's sick baby over in Lake Maitland. After Daddy died, there was just me and Mama. I was an only child. Alone with Mama I might have felt lonely in the world, but I had Zora, my best friend, my secret keeper, and my talisman against sorrow. From the time I was old enough to have a conversation, Mama always liked to tell how my three-year-old self toddled over to Zora, who was squirming and fussing one pew away from us in her father's church, grabbed her hand, and didn't let go for the next hour. Zora took a long look at me, tried once to shake me loose, then settled right down to the idea of us being joined. Zora's mother liked to say that after I took a hold of Zora, Sunday morning service once again became a place of worship and peace for her. I don't remember that at all. In fact, my own first memory of Zora has the roles reversed: instead of me grabbing her, she's grabbing me and pulling me with her as she scrambles after a lizard that turns out to be a baby diamondback rattler. My screams brought our parents running, and Zora was praised for saving me. Only, I knew there would have been no need to save me if she hadn't taken hold of me in the first place. But I never held the scrapes against Zora. She made life in a town no bigger than a teacup feel like it held the whole world. 

Our narrator is Carrie Brown, who is a sort of Watson to young Zora's Sherlock Holmes, or, if you prefer (and I do), her Ellicott Skullworth to Zora's Banneker Bones. Incidentally, I wondered about the aptness of comparing these two young black girls to two older white men (Watson and Sherlock, not Ellicott and Banneker), but after I wrote this, I watched the video below in which the author makes the same comparison, so we're good:). 

Zora and Carrie are on a new case, and it's a fun one (from a mystery writer's perspective). Someone has stabbed the local mute man who can't say what happened. The middle grade mystery doesn't open with a body, but there'll be bodies before it's done. Further intriguing, the mute man is able to whisper something to the town conjure woman.

Note how Simon is able to tell us so much about Carrie and Zora's relationship and their motivations in this simple exchange:

The secret Mr. Polk shared with Old Lady Bronson didn't excite me; it frightened me. "Honestly, Zora, maybe it ain't for us to know. Maybe there's some secrets folks just ought to keep."
She looked at me incredulously. "Carrie Brown, you can't be serious. How on earth are we gonna suck the marrow out of life if we just sit by and let questions stroll down our street without inviting them in for a glass of lemonade? Mama always says, 'Ain't no one ever got dumber trying to answer a question.' And I intend to answer all life's questions.

Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground starts out rather tame-ish in 1903 in the town of Eatonville where all the inhabitants are black and doing as well as can be expected in America in 1903. But of course, white folks are at the edge of town conspiring to mess it all up because of course they are. And this is a book that gives us a very specific, and, sigh, accurate view of many white folks at the time (#notallgreatgrandmas):

There's nothing white folks won't do when colored folks have something they want.

No matter how clear our town borders seemed to me, they could be disregarded at any moment by white men who sought to hurt us.


Uneasy whites always bring black death.

Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground  isn't going to be a favorite read of our Trump-supporting relatives, but they're not really readers anyway. This is a book for reasonable, thinking folks who can appreciate facts for what they are and an honest discussion of them. If that's not you, go ahead and watch your Fox News.

White people reading this book will be made uncomfortable, even the ones who listen to NPR and voted for Obama twice:) Good. This is uncomfortable stuff and should not be read easily. 

If you're a teacher considering not reading this book to your class because some of your students are a different race than you and you don't want things to get awkward, quit being a coward. Read this book aloud. Now. Don't wait until February--this is American history all year round. Awkward discussions need to be had, so fight through it.

Getting back to the book, you'll remember this town has a conjure woman. This is one of my most favorite character introductions of ever:

A shadow fell across the doorway. We looked up to see Old Lady Bronson. She was wrapped in a dark-gray shawl, her giant black cowhide bag hung against her right hip. With soldier boots that stopped below her knees and the still-dissipating smoke rising around her, the town conjure  woman looked every bit the part of a witch. The steel-gray hair I'd only ever seen her wear in a in a single tight braid down her back blew wild behind her, gleaming with droplets of rain. Her freckled skin glowed in the lamplight. Silhouetted against the lightning-filled sky, Old Lady Bronson looked electrified.

There's a lot more to Old Lady Bronson than first meets the eye, but I can't tell you much without spoiling. She's an extremely interesting character and I'd like to read a book that was just about her without any children detectives, but that wouldn't be very middle grade:) She's wisely employed here as someone who may or may not have the ability to curse things, which might come up in a book subtitled "The Cursed Ground."

And she's extremely useful as a plot device, again in ways I shouldn't reveal. But authors, take note at the way T.R. Simon deploys Old Lady Bronson to provide necessary exposition rather than flat out telling us how old these girls are:

I always tell folks that twelve is a changeling year, and it looks like you starting to have some sense with your twelve years.

Carrie has developed feelings for Teddy, a friend of her and Zora's, and there's some other drama in the present tense of the story, but we're not going to bother with that. Because just when the reader is settling in for a familiar middle grade read about our young detectives solving a mystery, Simon pulls the rug out from beneath them by flashing back to 1855 to discuss the adventure of two other girls, Lucia and Prisca.

They might almost be Carrie and Zora in another life, save for one crucial difference. Though the girls start as equal, when they move to America, the darker-skinned Lucia is designated a slave and worked to the bone, while Prisca remains free. And the telling of their story is brutal and unflinching:

I was terrified of what Prisca's tears could bring.
And so I shushed her, apologizing gently until her tears slowed.
In that moment I learned to be a slave even with Prisca. To bottle up my feelings and my fears so that she did not unleash the force of her own power, a power she herself barely understood. The power to be a whole person, her whole self, while I was now forced to exist as a fraction of a human being, a slave with no rights to my own self. What Prisca did not understand, but that I now did, was that the past meant nothing.
She answered me in a ferocious whisper. "Out there you're a slave, but in here we are as we always have been. In here, nothing has changed!"
The first year Prisca often pulled me into her bed during the night and wept onto my shoulder. I did not weep with her. I lay still, the flesh and blood doll she turned to when her loneliness became too hard to bear.

Prisca was defending me--not because I was a person and should not be sold, but because I was her property and could not be taken from her.

There are worse passages to follow, but I won't share them all. Lucia is whipped and beaten and subjugated and endures all manner of things that are unpleasant, but which children growing up in Trump country need to be made aware actually happened.

 Know, children, just what sort of awfulness that man intends when he says he wants to "make America great again." Know the history his "fine people" marching in Charlottesville would have us repeat.

There is violence in this novel, but it's mostly the emotional kind. And even though there's at least one death that's a bit more graphic than what I'm accustomed to in middle grade fiction, Simon is mindful to explain these complex adult subjects in a manner that's easier to digest for younger readers, without altering the truth of what she's discussing:

Zora's brow creased. "What a horrible choice: freedom for yourself or slavery with the folks you love."
Teddy shook his head and said, "Seems like no matter what you chose, running or staying, you must have had a broken heard your whole life."

As I said, that opening passage at the top of this review reads like the thesis of an academic argument as much as the opening of a middle grade novel, and I dig that so hard. Crank up your Bob Dylan, fellow English majors, and let's discuss the meaning of "The Cursed Ground." Oh, sure, there's a conjure woman, but the curse of this particular patch of American soil has far less to do with magic than the action of our ancestors. 

Much of the tension of this story comes from learning how the story of 1855 connects to the story of 1903, which of course it does, brilliantly. Without spoiling, one character late in the novel tells us, "Slavery is over, but tonight you saw how it still haunts us."

Once the reader understands that this book is as much an essay as it is a story, they can fully appreciate the closing arguments:

Zora was right: history wasn't just something you read in a book. It was everything your life stood on. We who thought we were free from the past were still living it out.

Mr. Ambrose rubbed his forehead. "Because slavery isn't far enough in our past yet," he answered. "What we're facing now is the unfinished business of slavery."
"When will it be finished?" Zora demanded.
"That's what I want to know," I added.
"I don't know, girls. White folks have a disease A disease that started with slavery. We taught ourselves to see colored folks as inferior so we could enslave them. And now we have a need to keep seeing them as inferior. White folks have become dependent on feeling superior to the colored race; no matter how low we fall, we can tell ourselves that the colored man is always lower."
"Do you think that, too?" Zora asked.
Mr. Ambrose took a full minute to respond. "It would be a lie to say I didn't. Every white man I know has the seed of race hate planted and rooted in him by the time he's reached his fifth year. This country is founded on it, and not even a civil war could uproot it. The only way to fight that hate is to consciously decide every day to choose against the hate we've been taught."

Thankfully, in 2008, Barrack Obama was elected president and racism was over forever in the United States and white police never again shot an unarmed black man and evil white people never repeatedly flashed white power hand symbols behind a would-be rapist supreme court nominee put forward by the most evil political party our nation has ever seen.

The past is still very much with us, Esteemed Reader, as we are all living on cursed ground. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 

Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground is an important book that should be made available in every classroom across this country as a primer for American children to learn about this political mess they're inheriting. Don't miss this extraordinary novel.

And don't miss author T.R. Simon's interview on Wednesday. As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Zora and Me:The Cursed Ground:

A last flicker of lightning lit up his face, making invisible all the wrinkles of age for a fraction of a second and revealing the face of a troubled boy.

"You know how my mind works--once a question starts a fire inside me, I have to answer it, no matter how bad I get burned. There ain't no pain more painful than the pleasure I get from the light of truth."

For the first two weeks, when the two of us were alone, I allowed myself the fantasy that things between us were as they had been, that we still could enjoy each other's company in a time and place without slavery. It was a useless fantasy and a dangerous one. The present was a hell with no escape, and the past could change nothing about that.

Across his shoulder was slung the rifle he always carried, pressed tight against his lean frame like a second spine. 

House wasn't quite the right word. It was more like a shipwreck in the shape of a house.

The gun made the house feel like a cage set with a trap.

I burned with fear, sorrow, humiliation, and helplessness. And not one of Prisca's tears could extinguish that fire.

Zora elbowed me. She loved the way folks whose speech was plain as gray wool in normal times liked to trot out their biggest words on special occasions, as if they had been saving them up and didn't want to waste them on everyday things. We agreed that her father was king of the fifty-cent words, but there were a lot of dukes and earls and counts in the kingdom of Eatonville, too!

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own. 

Book Review: MERCI SUÁREZ CHANGES GEARS by Meg Medina

First Paragraph(s): To think, only yesterday I was in chancletas, sipping lemonade and watching my twin cousins run through the sprinkler in the yard. Now, I'm here in Mr. Patchett's class, sweating in my polyester school blazer and waiting for this torture to be over.
We're only halfway through Health and PE when he adjusts his tight collar and says, "Time to go."
I stand up and push in my chair, like we're always supposed to, grateful that picture day means that class ends early. At least we won't have to start reading the first chapter in the textbook: "I'm OK, You're OK: On Differences as We Develop."
Gross.
"Coming, Miss Suárez?" he asks me as he flips off the lights. That's when I realize I'm the only one still waiting for him to tell us to line up. Everyone else has already headed out the door.
This is sixth grade, so there won't be one of the PTA moms walking us down to the photographer. Last year, our escort pumped us up by gushing the whole way about how handsome and beautiful we all looked on the first day of school, which was a stretch since a few of us had mouthfuls of braces or big gaps between our front teeth. But that's over now. Here at Seaward Pines Academy, sixth-graders don't have the same teacher all day, like Miss Miller in the fifth grade. Now we have homerooms and lockers. We switch classes. We can finally try out for sports teams.

Do you love a great coming-of-age tale featuring a memorable character who's all too easy to relate to, Esteemed Reader? If so, Merci Suárez Changes Gears will truly change the gears of your heart. Did that metaphor work? No? Forget it, let's keep going.

Make sure you find your way back here on Wednesday as we'll have the great fortune to be joined by author Meg Medina who will be the next distinguished author to face the 7 Questions, and she will change the gears of your writer's mind. So don't miss it:)

Merci Suárez Changes Gears will make you laugh and cry in nearly equal amounts. It's a charming story that's about a lot of things, as is life, but mostly it's about an adolescent girl going through the agony of puberty in a way that made me cringe recalling my own experiences as well as watching my siblings go through that terrible trial of life. 

Recently, Little Ninja and I kept a caterpillar in a jelly jar long enough to watch it cocoon for a few days before we released a beautiful butterfly. It was majestic. The transition of a human from a child to a teenager is considerably less so:

"You're not supposed to smell good when you're playing outside," I grumbled, but Tia Inez wouldn't listen. She dumped the whole basket of powders, razors, and deodorants at the cashier's counter just the same.
"Merci, a young lady takes care of herself," she said, hand over her two-for-one coupons. "Like it or not, it's time."
Time for what, exactly? I wanted to know, but I didn't dare ask.

Esteemed Reader, my sixth and seventh grade years were the worst years of my life (and hopefully will always remain so, their ranking unchallenged). A big part of what made them so miserable is that my grandmother's health declined severely and then she died. Typing that sentence just now tore a leak in a carefully preserved packet of sorrow I usually avoid opening and am now quickly resealing because I have things to get done today.

One reason we read stories is to drain the build-up of emotion that accumulates over the average human life. Having a cry at a book or a movie or the new Spider-man video game (so awesome, and so sad) keeps those emotional packets drained to a maintainable level so we're not overwhelmed and can go about living our life without openly weeping at the tragedy of humanity's mortality.

Here's my point made better in the text:

Children don't need to hear life's ugliness. There's plenty of time for that. I've heard Abuela say that before. She hates when books and movies that Roli and I watch are sad or bloody. But that's so dumb. Plenty of sad things happen to kids all the time. Your dog dies. Your parents split up. Your best friend dumps you for someone better. Someone sends you a mean snap message.

Let us ***giggles obnoxiously*** change gears, and get back to the book. Without spoiling,  Merci Suárez Changes Gears will provide the reader a few opportunities to drain the build up in their emotional packets (starting to sound like I should see a doctor). Merci's grandfather, Lolo, is in declining health, and that's putting new pressures on Merci's entire family. Chiefly, it's forcing Merci to grow up faster than she'd like and to think of the world in a new way that's significantly less fun, but more nuanced than a child's perspective.

Also, we're going to talk a little about money and social class in a moment, because 1. I love talking about those things, and 2. It's a huge part of this story. But first, let us appreciate Merci's unique family situation. I'd argue that what Merci lacks in material wealth, she makes up for some with the wealth of family (not that you can buy a new bike with that):

Mami only marked the cheapo basic package, and I happen to know (because it said so in gigantic font on the letter we got at home this summer) that picture day at Seaward is one of our biggest school fundraisers. You're supposed to buy a lot, like for your family in Ohio that barely knows you and whatnot. But my family mostly lives on the same block, one house next to the other. We see one another every single day.

How we live confuses some people, so Mami starts her usual explanation. Our three flat-top houses are exact pink triplets, and they sit side by side here on Sixth Street. The one on the left, with the Sol Painting van parked out front, is ours. The one in the middle, with the flower beds, is where Abuela and Lolo live. The one on the right with the explosion of toys in the dirt, belongs to Tia Inez and the twins. Roli calls it the Suárez Compound, but Mami hates that name. She says it sounds like we're the kind of people who collect canned food and wait for the end of the world any minute. She's named it Las Casitas instead. The little houses. I just call it home.

Merci is going through lots of changes and she attends a schmancy private school full of kids with money who are also going through changes, because adolescents in puberty are so terrible, no one wants to be around them but other adolescents (and frequently not even them), so we as a society have determined to keep them centrally located where they can just go be miserable together and leave the rest of us alone:)

Merci and her brother attend Seaward on a scholarship, so that in addition to the usual feeling of no one understanding that accompanies puberty, she's stuck in a place where most of her richer classmates really don't understand. They can try out for the soccer team because their parents can afford the cost of playing accompanied with the loss of a built in babysitter. But Merci has to watch her younger cousins and help out with her father's painting business, which totally sucks and isn't fair at all.

A lesser author might invent a way for Merci to suddenly become rich (like, say, meeting their really rich cousin, Banneker Bones for the first time). Meg Medina is more responsible than that. Without giving the whole thing away, Merci's journey is to grow up and appreciate the good things she has without focusing on what she lacks. She also learns the importance of putting the needs of her family above her own needs, which is a lesson too many adults still haven't learned. 

There's a literal plot element of Merci saving to buy a new bike, but the gears she's changing are the metaphorical ones in her mind. What Meg Medina does most successfully in this novel, aside from ripping out her reader's heart, is to put us in the mindset of Merci, who's beginning to notice darker things about the world around her for this first time:

I creep closer to the cruiser as Mami talks, being careful not to make any sudden moves the whole way. Cops are community helpers and all that, but a billy club and gun don't ever look very friendly.

Although it's not the main thrust of the novel, a lot of what Merci is noticing as she mentally changes gears is how fundamentally unfair life in America is. For example, she's invited to a party and told it's a big deal because the host's dad owns a yacht dealership, so she should be thrilled. And there are plenty of other harsh realities for Merci to notice along the way:

Seaward's gym is ginormous, so it took us three whole days to paint it. Plus, our school colors are fire-engine red and gray. You know what happens when you stare at bright red too long? You start to see green balls in front of our eyes every time you look away. Hmpf. Try doing detail work in that blinded condition. For all that, the school should give me and my brother, Roli, a whole library, not just a few measly textbooks. Papi had other ideas, of course. "Do a good job in here," he insisted, "so they know we're serious people." I hate when he says that. Do people think we're clowns? It's like we've always got to prove something.

"Canned? Is this all you have?" Tia asks.
Abuela gives her a withering look. "¡Por Dios! Yes, it's all I have, and there's nothing wrong with it. You were raised on leche evaporada!"
"But the twins only drink fresh milk. You know they're picky about food."
"The twins aren't on social security, Inez."

(in regard to a hospital - MGN) But Abuela's on a roll, and her voice is getting louder. "And why doesn't anybody make house calls anymore? How are two ancianos supposed to get all these appointments? Those silly shuttles that never come on time? And I don't even want to start to tell you about the cost. They charge you the eye on your face, and then they use it to pay for their fancy lobbies with the waterfalls and fish tanks."

And that's where we'll leave it, Esteemed Reader. Merci Suárez Changes Gears is an entertaining and moving novel that's perfect for kids in adolescence and anyone who remembers having gone through the same thing. 

Don't miss Meg Medina's interview on Wednesday. As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Merci Suárez Changes Gears:

I ignore them as best I can and take my turn.
I sit on the stool exactly the way the photographer says: Ankles crossed. Torso swiveled to the left and leaning forward. Hands in lap. Head tilted like a confused puppy. Who sits like this, ever? I look like a victim of taxidermy.

If you want to know all the ways you can be tragically hurt in everyday life, just talk to Abuela. She keeps a long list—and she doesn't mind sharing details.
"Get back from the canal," she yells whenever one of us kids wanders too close to the fence behind our house. "An alligator will close its jaws on you and drag you to the bottom!"
"Put shoes on!" she'll say whenever I'm barefoot. "You'll get worms in your belly the size of spaghetti."

"No offense, Merci, but you're a wreck."
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to let my eye stray. It's only Edna being Edna. I should be used to it by now. No offense, Merci, but you're singing off-key. No offense, Merci, but I want to study my spelling words with somebody else. It took me a while to figure Edna out last year, but I finally got wise. No offense is what Edna says right before she takes a hatchet to your feelings.

The patio already looks like a toy chest detonated.

I look at my pen pal assignment: Lena, who sits in the front row and cracks her knuckles. I don't really know her because this is our only class together. Plus, at lunch, she usually reads by herself outside. She got a spiky haircut over the weekend, though, with the ends dyed blue. She looks a little like a hedgehog.

"Things happen over time, Merci," Mami finally says. "We grow up and older. We need to respect how things change and adjust."
Her words jumble out of her mouth and make me angry. "What are you talking about?" I say, cutting her off. "It's all blah, blah, blah. Nobody will tell me what's really wrong!"

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.