What’s behind the “ nunya bidness door”? And is that a gun sticking out from Grandpop’s waistband? Reynolds’ middle-grade debut meanders like the best kind of summer vacation but never loses sense of its throughline. And he and Ernie will have to do chores, like picking peas and scooping dog poop.

Then, he breaks the model truck that’s one of the only things Grandma still has of his deceased uncle. Next, there’s no Internet, so the questions he keeps track of in his notebook (over 400 so far) will have to go un-Googled. The book adheres to the white default.Įleven-year-old Brooklynite Genie has “worry issues,” so when he and his older brother, Ernie, are sent to Virginia to spend a month with their estranged grandparents while their parents “try to figure it all out,” he goes into overdrive.įirst, he discovers that Grandpop is blind. The portrayal of home-schoolers borders on cliché, and the resolution of Elise’s mother’s extreme negligence is far too easy. The persistent appearance of a raven that alternately comforts and disturbs Elise hints at an underlying magic that is insufficiently explored. Elise’s social isolation and pain are realistically portrayed, and her determination to stay silent even when she is accused of stealing and is threatened by Conn’s older brother, Dónal, underscores her distress (even as it may also frustrate readers). When Elise discovers her family’s dark secret, which explains her mother’s neglect and her isolated childhood, she turns inward, falling into hallucinations and fantasy.

Her plan backfires as she manages to alienate her old friend, Mel, and frustrate Conn, a possible ally, leaving her more isolated than ever. And whether it is Bernard Billows’ greasy hair and milky smell or Elise’s own Armenian unibrow, Elise decides that the best way to navigate Green Pasture Middle School is to disappear. Classroom politics, rival friendships, and social media are minefields. The transition from home schooling to public school proves more difficult that Elise imagined. A series of social missteps convinces eighth-grader Elise that remaining silent is preferable to saying the wrong thing and looking foolish.

After Zero by Christina Collins