Caroline Brooks DuBois's reserved yet razor-sharp debut features a girl whose changing body shocks and confuses her, while her country reels from tragedy.
On September 11, 2001, preteen Abbey gets her period for the first time. "It arrives like a spotlight,/ like an intruder in my bedroom,/ like a meteor to my center of gravity./ It arrives./ And my body--/ in cahoots--allows it." Betrayed and worried about bleeding onto her white pants, she barely notices that the teachers are whispering ("Something's happening--in New York and in D.C.") and the bus driver is crying. "Crying!" Abbey thinks, "about what's happening in New York?" Her Aunt Rose lives in New York but, in her opinion, "if anyone has cause to cry, it's me." When Abbey arrives home, though, her mother doesn't even notice that her daughter is different. Abbey finds her mother packing: Aunt Rose is missing, and Abbey's mom is driving from Tennessee to New York, leaving Abbey alone with her army father who, later that evening, awkwardly hands her a copy of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
While Abbey's frank voice is sure to connect with middle-grade readers, Holiday House editor Sally Morgridge says no one could have anticipated the book being quite as relevant to young readers as it is now. "Today's middle schoolers are living through another strange, terrifying time," she said. It's unfortunate that Abbey's relationship with Jiman, a Muslim girl, is treated more as a growth opportunity for Abbey, who's white, than a friendship with a fully formed person, but the character is still treated with sensitivity, if without nuance. With keen insight into the mind of her young protagonist, DuBois crafts a gentle contemplation on stability and change. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness