A SHOT AT NORMAL

A 16-year-old with anti-vaxxer parents fights back.

Juniper Jade’s parents follow a hippie, New Age lifestyle: home schooling, following an all-organic lifestyle, using homemade deodorant, forbidding cellphones—and, especially, no vaccinations. While her siblings, Poppy and Sequoia, are too young to know any better, Juniper wishes she could have a more mainstream life, pleading in vain to attend public school. But when she catches measles and spreads it at the farmers market to Katherine St. Pierre, a 6-week-old baby who then dies, Juniper comes to understand how her parents’ decisions affect more lives than hers and she vows to get vaccinated. Unfortunately, no medical professional will allow a minor to get any shots without their parents’ permission, so she searches for a lawyer who will help her make her case. A sweet romance with Nico, a boy she meets at the library, keeps the tone breezy and the story moving along at a good pace. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic and news stories about the rise in anti-vaccination movements, this novel presents a timely and important examination of the role of personal responsibility in public health in addition to including a thoughtful discussion about bodily autonomy. However, the one-note characters and predictable plot prevent this from rising above the issues at hand. Main characters default to White.

A well-researched, compelling concept that suffers from heavy-handed treatment.