Middle Grade Monday: Jelly by Jo Cotterill

Image: Little Bee Books

Jelly by Jo Cotterill. 272 p. Yellow Jacket/ Little Bee Books, January, 2020. 9781499810066. (Review of finished purchased copy.)

Middle Grade Monday features Jelly by Jo Cotterill. Twelve-year-old Angelica, Jelly for short, does spot-on impressions of her teachers and is quick with a joke. She does so both to keep her classmates laughing; but also to beat them to the punch. Jelly is overweight. When classmates do make hurtful comments about her weight, she's the first to laugh it off. She lives with her single mom who tends to have boyfriends who don't treat her very well. Jelly is also a poet and write poems in her journal, which she shares with no one. 

This first-person narrative is engaging. Jelly is frank and quite funny. Her poems reveal her sensitive side. Readers will root for Jelly as she wrestles with self-confidence and her body image. 

Middle Grade Monday and Arc Review: Dear Sweet Pea by Julie Murphy

Image: HarperCollins Publishers

Dear Sweet Pea by Julie Murphy. 288 p. Balzer + Bray/ HarperCollins Publishers, October 1, 2019. 9780062473073. (Review of arc courtesy of publisher.)

Middle Grade Monday features Dear Sweet Pea by Julie Murphy. Happy book birthday tomorrow to Dear Sweet Pea, Murphy's middle grade debut. Older readers might be familiar with Murphy's YA fare, Dumplin' and Puddin'. 

Patricia "Sweet Pea" DiMarco's parents are getting a divorce. They want to keep things civilized and easy for Sweet Pea, so her father buys a nearly identical house two doors down the block. It's a little weird spending half the week in her dad's new house. She has belongings in both places, only her cat, Cheese remains at mom's house. Each time she changes houses she passes Miss Flora Mae's house. Miss Flora Mae is usually in her sun room working on her advice column, "Miss Flora Mae I?" Sweet Pea is fascinated by her. She has even written to her asking for advice and wonders why Miss Flora Mae did not write back. At school, she's stuck sitting near her ex-best friend, Kiera, who disses her at every opportunity. Luckily, her new best friend, Oscar is there to prop her up.

When Miss Flora Mae has to go away for a few weeks, she asks Sweet Pea to tend to her plants and forward her mail. She's very particular about how she wants Sweet Pea to perform these duties. One day, Sweet Pea spies a letter with familiar handwriting on it and decides to open it. Once she reads it, she writes her advice and mails it to Miss Flora Mae's editor. Seeing her words published gives Sweet Pea such a thrill that she can't resist answering a few more letters. What can go wrong?

Whelp, I devoured this in one sitting. Murphy makes a splash with her middle grade debut here. It's wonderful! Great voice, terrific characters, funny and relatable. I would love to reread this with my ears. Sweet Pea is matter-of-fact about being a bit overweight. Her parents do not make an issue of it. They are also attentive and involved in her life. She's a thoughtful seventh grader who is distracted by most things most seventh graders are distracted by. 

Readers who want a gentle, humorous story about navigating family changes, friendship changes and school will love Sweet Pea. Highly recommended!

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Puddin' by Julie Murphy

Puddin' by Julie Murphy. Unabridged Audiobook on 1 MP3-CD. 11 Hours Read by Erin Mallon and Kyla Garcia. Balzer + Bray, May, 2018. 

Teen Tuesday features Puddin' by Julie Murphy. This companion to Dumplin' can potentially stand alone but it would enhance the reader's experience to have read Dumplin' first. Puddin' picks up months after Dumplin'  and is Millicent and Callie's story. The two alternate chapters to relate the events that throw them into each other's unwilling company. Both books are highly recommended for teen readers.

This was an engaging companion to Dumplin' though I must admit that Mallon's low-range voice and smooth snarkiness threw me a bit. Though it was not the way I envisioned the Millicent's voice, I grew to love her in Puddin'. This new-to-me narrator turned in a well-paced performance. Garcia, on the other hand, perfectly embodied the alpha girl Callie I heard in my head. 

The narrative bounces back and forth between the two and readers come to realize along with the characters that they are more than folks' assumptions. Commentary about body positivity is leavened with humor but is still sharp, smart and hits home. 

Puddin' is a must-read for all fans of Dumplin'! I thought I read somewhere that the story is in development for Netflix. I sure hope they do a better job adapting it than Dumplin'. While Dumplin' was entertaining if you hadn't read the book, some curious decisions were made about omitting a couple of important characters.

Teen Tuesday: Fat Angie Rebel Girl Revolution by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo

Fat Angie Rebel Girl Revolution by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo. 344 p. Candlewick Press, March 5, 2019. 9780763693459. (Review of arc courtesy of publisher.)

Good morning TMS Readers! Teen Tuesday features Fat Angie: rebel girl revolution by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo. Readers of Fat Angie know that Angie was in a better place at the end. Unfortunately, KC decided to move in with her dad and moved away from Angie, leaving her to start the school year alone. Jake, her best friend has been acting weird lately. Her awful mother continues to be awful. Her brother, Wang continues to be Wang and her sister is still dead. So, she runs the gauntlet alone knowing Gary Klein is lying in wait. And then there's the monument the town has built to honor her sister. It's all just too much. When Gary attacks her and she fights back, bloodying his nose in the process, it is Angie who is suspended. Her mother grounds her and threatens have her committed to a psychiatric hospital before leaving on a business trip. Angie trashes her room and decides to take that road trip her sister wrote about in a postcard. She does this with an ex-best friend, Jamboree and her friend Zeke and her cousin Darius, of all people. Darius, who saw what Gary did and stood by. Did nothing. Said nothing. 

There's a lot of heartbreak on the road to hope here. Angie found a permanent place in my heart in Fat Angie so I was thrilled, but worried to visit with her again. (Kind of like the feeling I get when a student who had a hard time in middle school comes back to visit - equal parts delight, hope and anxiety.) Her inner dialogue is so brilliantly astute and often hilarious. It rarely comes out of her mouth because the people around her would prefer to pass judgment than to take the time to see. Her self-worth has been emotionally (and sometimes physically) beaten out of her and she is intensely grieving the loss of the only person who really knew her and loved her unconditionally.

Not gonna lie: this is a tough read. The violence Angie endures at the hands of Gary and her mother stuns. The debilitating panic attacks Angie suffers are so vivid, I didn't realize that I was holding my breath until I let it out. And, I dare you not to sob near the end in the scene at the Ohio River. It is so hard to read through tears.

Fat Angie Rebel Girl Revolution can stand alone but do yourself a favor and read Fat Angie first.  

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy. Unabridged downloadable e-audiobook. ~9 hours. Read by Eileen Stevens. (Review from e-book borrowed from public library.)

Willowdean Dickson is confident and brazenly unapologetic about her size despite being the daughter of a teen beauty pageant-winning mother who takes pride in still fitting her gown from the pageant. Will's confidence is due in large part due to her relationship with her Aunt Lucy, her mother's morbidly obese sister, who died six months earlier of a massive heart attack. Will is still grieving. Her mom has refused to talk about Lucy and she's about to start cleaning out Lucy's room in order to turn it into a crafts room. Lucy basically raised Willowdean to allow Will's single-parent mom to work as an aide in a nursing home and run the pageant yearly. She loved Willowdean unconditionally. 

When her secret crush on "private school boy" seems reciprocated, Will swoons into her first kiss until he embraces her and runs his hand over her back-fat, causing her to lose confidence and fear the reactions of her classmates should word get out. 

She pities several classmates who are bullied mercilessly, namely another fat girl named Millie and Hannah, who is made fun of because of her crooked teeth. Also unsettling her is her friendship with Ellen. They've been bfs forever, ever since bonding over a shared love of Dolly Parton. But Ellen, has a boyfriend and is considering losing her virginity, which leaves Will feeling even more left behind. Also, Ellen's skinny co-workers openly wonder why she's friends with Willowdean. All this tests their friendship. Ellen supports her decision to enter the beauty pageant, but it is Willowdean's suggestion that Ellen not compete in the pageant that fractures the friendship.

Oh my! How I adore this book! It took me forever to get to because most of the reviews' recommended age is grade 9 and up and I've a hard enough time keeping up with middle grade and younger YA! As soon as it was adapted for movie, I knew I had to read it and put myself on the lo-ong waiting list for the audio. As soon as any YA book is made into a movie, I have fifth graders coming in to check the books out and I have to invite them to go across the street to public library. 

The movie cut out most of the frank stuff that caused reviewers to recommend the reading to high school readers. And that is a shame because it's smart and incisive stuff, like deciding to lose one's virginity. I was also sad to see that the Mitchell storyline was cut from the movie. I loved Mitchell and my heart just broke for his earnest self.

But  this is supposed to be an audiobook review. Eileen Stevens is a new-to-me narrator and I need to look up what else she's done because her voice was like honey. She differentiated the female characters well. Added bonus: she sounded like a teen. 

Dumplin' is the best body-positive book I've read in a long time! It's one all teens should read-with the eyes or with the ears. Just read it! I loved it and can't wait to read its companion, Puddin'.