JUSTICE IN A BOTTLE

A 13-year-old aspiring journalist sets out to prove her elderly neighbor’s innocence of a long-ago crime in this middle-grade mystery.

Middle school student Nita Simmons lives with her mother in Crawford, Virginia. Her mom struggles to make ends meet, so Nita initially hesitates to ask for a $25 fee to join the Junior Journalist Club at school. Later, after an article that Nita writes for her school paper is discredited, the young girl doubts her journalistic abilities despite encouragement from a supportive teacher. Nita, who’s identified in the text as having brown skin, gets to know her elderly African American neighbor, Earl Melvin. She later discovers that he was sent to prison for 20 years for a rape of a white co-worker, but she’s certain that he didn’t commit such a crime. Nita’s mother admonishes her daughter to avoid the ex-convict, but the girl is driven to pursue the story and honor her journalistic pledge: “To seek the truth. Check. To fight injustice. Check.” In the process, she gets to know Melvin, who introduces her to civil rights history and the music of musicians she’s never heard before, such as Nina Simone. In his debut, Fanning makes Nita’s aspirations and commitment to journalism compelling and believable, and her family’s poverty is conveyed via subtle but telling details; for instance, Nita is the only journalism student in her class who must check out a laptop. The young girl watches one present-day protest on television, but the focus of the book is less on the present than on injustices of the past: “She’d read about the bombings in Birmingham and all the awful things that could happen to people because of the color of their skin.”

A timely, well-executed story of a teen journalist’s determination to uncover the truth.