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GOOD DIFFERENT

Name: GOOD DIFFERENT
Author: Meg Eden Kuyatt
ISBN: 9781338816105

by Meg Eden Kuyatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 2023

Short free-verse vignettes beautifully evoke despair, loneliness—and determination.

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An autistic artist just wants to survive seventh grade.

Selah, a White girl, is a “good kid,” praised for her schoolwork—but inside, she’s a “dragon.” She can’t abide noise, smells, or touches, and her mother has been extremely clear about hiding her differences in public. But her “normal-person mask” is fraying. When Selah is praised for getting an A on a test and there is loud applause, she thinks, “I want to crawl / under my desk.” Eventually, Selah has a violent outburst: Now classmates and teachers treat her like a wild animal. In her notebook, Selah writes free verse about being a dragon—a metaphor for all her neurodivergent frustration with social norms. She worries that she shouldn’t share her poetry (“My feelings are loud. Rude. / BIG. Sometimes / angry. Are those OK in poems?”), but the verses ultimately allow her to share her scary feelings. It’s a revelation when she finds fellow neurodivergent geeks at FantasyCon. Happy, married adults use earplugs and sensory tools, wear color-coded communication bracelets, and speak calmly and without shame about their autism. Can these tools help when educators at her private school are hostile to autistic kids’ needs? Can they help when even her neurodivergent mother doesn’t want to recognize that Selah isn’t “normal”? Through her poems, Selah believably mends her family and starts a movement in her school, showing readers ways that “different” can be wonderful.

Short free-verse vignettes beautifully evoke despair, loneliness—and determination. (author’s note, resources) (Verse fiction. 9-12)

Pub Date: April 4, 2023

ISBN: 9781338816105

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S POETRY

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BECAUSE OF MR. TERUPT

by Rob Buyea ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 12, 2010

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During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)

Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
CARTER AVERY'S TRICKY FOURTH-GRADE YEAR
by Rob Buyea

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DAREDEVILS
by Rob Buyea

- BOOK REVIEW
WHAT COMES NEXT
by Rob Buyea

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CLUES TO THE UNIVERSE

by Christina Li ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2021

Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.

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An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.

Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.

Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)