Book Review

The only constant in Joy’s life seems to be change. She’s moved away from her beloved home, left her friends behind, enrolled at a new school, and given up her most enjoyable activity – piano lessons. Now, Joy and her family must live in a cramped, thin-walled apartment. With her parents’ arguments getting more frequent, Joy desperately needs a quiet place, a sanctuary away from all her problems.

Over the past year, Madalyn has weathered a relentless storm of problems. From a terrible school to moving and now her father working on the other side of the country, she hopes the cloudy days are in the past. It starts with Madalyn moving in with her great-uncle, Papa Lobo, and getting a fresh start at a new school.

Fallout by Steve Sheinkin tells the complex history of the Cold War. It captures the period between the end of WWII, closing its telling with the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a narrative nonfiction text, it is the perfect resource for studying and learning more about this historical period

After Lucy’s 5-year-old brother dies from a heart defect, her parents move her to a new house, new neighborhood, and new school. While her parents deal with their own grief, twelve-year-old Lucy, who is Jewish and cued as white, must grapple with hers in a school where her classmates are school shooting survivors.

Fast-pitch softball captain Shenice “Lightning” Lockwood has nothing else on her mind besides leading her team to the sectional championship and beyond. As the only all-Black team among a sea of mostly white faces, a championship win means more than just a trophy, especially in the Lockwood family, a family known for its generational talent.

After a solar flare changes the trajectory of Halley’s Comet to collide with Earth, the planet’s inhabitants are all but doomed. Only a handful of people are chosen to keep the human race alive on another planet, including twelve-year old Petra Peña and her Latinx family. Although Petra longs to stay with her storytelling grandmother, she at least hopes to become a cuentista in this new world.