Middle Grade Monday and Arc Review: The Boys in the Back Row by Mike Jung

Image: Levine Querido

The Boys in the Back Row by Mike Jung.268 p. Levine Querido, October 6, 2020. 9781646140114. (Review of arc courtesy of publisher.)

I'm back! I took a rare week off of blogging. My week at a lake in the Adirondack Mountains was filled with reading and mostly absent of wi-fi and cell service, which was weird. Cell service was spotty and I could occasionally get on the Internet but not reliably and not for any sustained length of time. 

My dogs loved the lake and the freedom of running around a fenced in yard and in and out of the water. We've always vacationed at the beach mostly due to the fact that we owned a beach house and the dogs were largely stuck inside since the property was small and not fenced in and dogs weren't allowed on the beach between May and October. I never thought of myself as a lake person. I was pleasantly surprised. 

Middle Grade Monday features The Boys in the Back Row by Mike Jung. The back row refers to the percussion section in a band and the boys refers to two best friends, Mike Park and Eric Costa. Mike is the narrator and he's super-anxious about the start of his sixth grade year. He doesn't look forward to all the changes sixth grade will bring; but he's happy to have Eric to help him through. They've been best friends since fourth grade band and also share a love of comics, especially Sandpiper. Eric has convinced Mike to switch from flute and piccolo to drums this year so that they can sit together during band. The two have to put up with their frenemy, Sean, who is also a drummer and takes a great deal of pleasure in bullying Matt and Eric, casually slinging racist and homophobic slurs their way. 

The boys do their best to ignore it and focus on the epic end-of-year band trip to an amusement park for a competition. Then they learn that the author of Sandpiper will be at a comic con nearby at the same time as the competition! They make plans to sneak away from band to attend but Sean wants in. What makes everything worse? Eric is moving across the country at the end of the school year.

This story is both amusing and endearing. It is familiar as well as utterly unique. It celebrates band kids and boy best friendship that is filled with warm affection and absent of budding toxic masculinity and constant competition. The Boys in the Back Row releases in October and is a first-purchase.

I've been a school librarian for twenty-two years now - the first ten were spent at a K - 8 school, the last twelve at a 5 - 8 middle school. I've also raised four boys. Something happens between fifth and sixth grades to both boys and girls. Grade five and below, the students are like adorable puppies, relatively inclusive and squirming bundles of energy. Some invisible switch clicks between fifth and sixth grade and suddenly lines are drawn and bewildered boys and girls find themselves excluded. Friendships fracture. Unwritten, unspoken rules are broken. Puberty happens for some and not others. Both boys and girls can turn mean. What is especially heartbreaking is how boy friendships evolve and how gentleness and affection get smothered by competition and one-upmanship. I love how Mike Jung has celebrated boy best friendship.