Susie B. Won't Back Down by Margaret Finnegan

Fifth grader Susie B. describes herself as a "butterfly brain" because of her attention and impulse control issues. When it is announced that Student Council elections will be held, she decides she wants to run for president and her best friend Joselyn decides to run treasurer. Together, they plan their strategy, but Susie B.'s motivations aren't exactly presidential - she really just wants to be able to use the microphone for leading the Pledge of Allegiance everyday, fighting for "the rights of all people, all the time," including polar bears and paragraph writers, and for having eternal glory. 

Of course, the most popular kids in fifth grade are also running for office. Susie and Joselyn realize that their best hope of getting elected is to have popular, perfect Chloe and her friends on their side. Only problem is they don't like each other.

Meanwhile, their teacher, Mr. Springer, has assigned the class a hero's project in which each student can choose the hero of their choice. Susie B., who has always disliked being call that, decides it isn't so bad after all when she chooses Susan B. Anthony. Except that the more she learns about her chosen hero, the more Susie B. becomes disillusioned.

The, when Susie B. gets angry and tells Chloe she's mean in class, Joselyn thinks they have lost any chance of winning the election. When she tells Susie to let her deal with Chloe. Susie B. agrees, but it's beginning to look like Joselyn is really having a lot more fun with Chloe and her friends. 

Susie B. records all the day to day fifth grade dramatics in epistolary form in a notebook addressed to Susan B. Anthony, including all the negative information she discovers about her hero/not hero. With the election isn't going well, Susan B. Anthony proving herself not to be the hero Susie B. thought she was, and now feeling like her best friend is abandoning her, Susie is feeling discouraged, but it also gives her the chance to get to know other kids in her class better, including Carson, who turns out to be a great artist and a real help, as well as her opponent Danny Rodriguez, who is pretty nice after all, and really doesn't want to be the golden boy he is forced to be by his parents. 

Susie B. Won't Back Down is a delightful novel about being who you are and finding where you fit in in the world. For Susie, that means being honest with yourself and others, but she still has a lot to learn and paradoxes to grapple with. For instance, can Susan B. Anthony be a hero and not a hero at the same time? Discovering that the people you think are perfect are quite fallible and not always who they appear to be is one of those lessons in life all kids must deal with sooner or later, and fifth grade is the year that Susie B. learns this lesson. And though she may deal with it inappropriately at times, it is a lesson she eventually comes to terms with. 

Although the novel is completely written in letters addressed to Susan B. Anthony, none of Susie B.'s exuberance, honesty, or disappointments is lost. I did like that Susie has an intact family who is supportive and seem to understand her attention challenges, though they don't seem to play a big part in her life and aren't really developed, unlike the character of her half brother, Lock. I did think it odd that though Lock is biracial, it never really figures into the story. However, Lock is the voice of reason in Susie's life, even if she doesn't want to hear what he has to say sometimes. But it is clear that the two love and care deeply about each other.

I wouldn't call Susie B. Won't Back Down a coming-of-age novel per se, but it is certainly the start of that self-discovery process for Susie B, and Finnegan handles it with honesty and humor and a few tears. Don't miss meeting this charming young lady. 

This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was an ARC gratefully received from Barbara Fisch at Blue Slip Media.

  

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“Susie is energetic, breathless, enthusiastic, and genuinely, charmingly funny.” —Kirkus Reviews

A Junior Library Guild Selection

Margaret Finnegan is the author of the middle-grade novels Susie B. Won’t Back Down and We Could Be Heroes. Her writing often focuses on themes on inclusion, hard choices, and being true to yourself. She also makes a really good chocolate cake. To learn more, and to download free discussion guides, visit MargaretFinnegan.com.

Twitter: @FinneganBegin

Instagram: @finneganbegin

Check out the fun mock newspaper, The Susie B News--available for download here!

The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar

Nishat Ahsan is a 16-year-old Bangladeshi girl living with her family - her Ammu (mom) and Abbu (dad), and younger sister Priti - in Dublin, Ireland. Nishat has known for a long time that she is a lesbian, but now she's tired of hiding it. To spare her parents the future disappointment that they will never have a big Bengali wedding for her, on the day of Sunny Apu's engagement party, Nishat decides it is time to come out to her parents. It does not go well. As Sunny Apu later tells Nishat "Muslims aren't gay."

Nishat also has an interest in henna, a family tradition, and has been practicing on herself and Priti, and she getting pretty good at it. When Sunny Apu's wedding rolls around, Nishat does the henna on herself and Priti. At the wedding, she meets and is attracted to Flavia, a biracial Brazilian Irish girl, who admires Nishat's henna designs and later turns out to be a classmate. But Flavia is also Chyna Quinn's cousin, and Chyna is Nishat's former friend, now mortal enemy and a bully.

At school, Nishat, Flavia and Chyna are in the same Business class and when it is announced that the students will be required to develop a business, and to make it interesting, it will be a competition with a prize of 1,000 Euros. Nishat decides to set up a henna business with friends Jess and Chaewon, but when Flavia and Chyna show up at school with a henna design on their hands, she is more than a little upset. Flavia is a talented artist, and has copied Nishat wedding design perfectly. The two cousins decide their class project will also be a henna business.  

To complicate matters for Nishat, Jess and Chaewon decide they feel left out of the henna business and decide to strike out on their own, her parents are barely acknowledging her, convinced that she has chosen to be a lesbian, and her crush on Flavia is in a constant state of flux. Sometimes it's on, sometimes it's off, sometimes Nishat thinks Flavia feels the same way, sometimes she thinks maybe not, but Chyna's presence always overshadows things. Luckily for Nishat, Priti always has her back - or does she?

The Henna Wars is a very engaging novel, the kind of story that hooks you from page one. I found that when I had to stop to do other things, I couldn't wait to get back to Nishat's story. Since she and her family are Bangladeshi, the author has included lots of Bengali culture and tradition, including the art of henna. This always gives a novel so much character and depth, and a real sense of authenticity. For me, it was another one of those books that was a sliding glass door into Nishat's world, to paraphrase Rudine Sims Bishop. And I was happy to be invited in. 

But Jaigirdar has also explored a number of important themes. Her main theme is family and Nishat's relationship with her parents and her sister. Up until she came out, the family seemed to be close knit and very loving. Her parents believe Nishat chose to be gay and can't understand why she doesn't just change her mind. Nishat and Priti are sisters and best friends. They share a bond that is enviable, with few secrets that aren't shared. And while Nishat can be a little impulsive, Priti is often the voice of reason for her.  

The other relationship in Nishat's life is her friendship with Jess and Chaewon. Interestingly, they are friends in school, but never socialize away from school. And perhaps the most important relationship that is looked at is Nishat's obsession with Flavia and what it does to her relationships with Priti, Jess and Chaewon. And of course, at the center of everything is Nishat's Bangladeshi heritage, her Muslim religion, and always feeling different.

The Henna Wars is a debut novel for Adiba Jaigirdar and she has really hit it out of the ballpark with Nishat's story. It is one of the most satisfying novels I've read in a long time and had just the ending I needed it to have. Don't miss it!

This book is recommended for readers age 14+

This book was borrowed from the Brooklyn Public Library

Stella Endicott and the Anything-Is-Possible Poem written by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen

Stella Endicott and the Anything-Is-Possible Poem

by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen

Candlewick Press, 2020, 96 pages

My young readers have always loved Kate DiCamillo's Mercy Watson and her Tales from Deckawoo Drive series. And now I'm excited at the possibility of being about to share the latest Deckawoo tale with them. Stella Endicott and the Anything-Is-Possible Poem is the fifth volume in the series and I know my kids are already excited about it, thanks to Zoom meetings. I haven't read it to them (copyright laws), but this is pretty much what I have told them about it:

It's Stella's first day of second grade and it just so happens that her new teacher, Tamar Calliope Liliana, loves the same things Stella loves - 'listening closely, speaking softly, and singing loudly.' Second grade is definitely on course to be wonderful. Well, except for Horace Broom, the class know-it-all, who naturally knows the definition of metaphor when Ms. Liliana asks if the class knows what a metaphor is before assigning them homework - to write a poem with a metaphor in it. That ought to be easy, Stella thinks, especially since Ms. Liliana also agrees with Baby Lincoln - that anything is possible in stories and in poems, too.

But writing a poem that includes a metaphor AND the idea of that anything is possible isn't as easy as Stella thought it would. Needing some moral support and inspiration, Stella heads over to visit Mercy Watson and sure enough, she comes up with a lovely poem that includes Mercy.

The next day, proud of what she has written, Stella mistakenly lets Horace read her poem but when he comes to the part where Mercy is sitting on the couch, he insists that pigs do not do that, that it is not possible, that pigs live on farms. But Stella stands her ground and insists that Mercy lives in a house and sits on the couch - all the time. No longer 'speaking softly,' Ms. Liliana sends Stella and Horace to Mr. Tinwiddie, the principal, and it is a trip from classroom to principal's office like no other. But by the end of their adventure, Stella and Horace have become friends, and have learned to respect their differences, and look at things from the other's point of view. My young readers are just going to have to wait to find out what adventures Stella and Horace have on their to Mr. Tinwiddie's office. 

Stella's story, like all the Deckawoo tales, is just charming. DiCamillo has taken something a simple as a poem and a walk to the principal's office to highlight Stella and Horace's different and opposite personalities, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and has shown us how adversaries can learn to use them to help each other and even forge a friendship. 

I've read the Mercy Watson and the Deckawoo tales to a lot of kids and one of the things they really like about them are the recurring characters, and not only that, but the characters are always consistently who the kids expect them to be, in both the action of the story and the illustrations. And kids like that - it's familiar and comfortable and feels like they are seeing old friends each time they visit and revisit Deckawoo Drive. And yet each story is refreshingly new and has a gentle lesson that even my youngest readers can grasp. And Stella Endicott and the Anything-Is-Possible Poem is no different.  

And luckily, there is a treasure trove of Tales from Deckawoo Drive. Have you read them all?

This book is recommended for readers age 6+, but 5-year-olds like it, too.

This book was an EARC gratefully received from NetGalley and the publisher, Candlewick Press.