AMELIA GRAY IS ALMOST OKAY

Identity struggles, moving, and navigating relationships with family and peers are at the center of this middle-grade novel.

Amelia Gray, who prefers blending into the crowd, is experiencing her 39th last day of school—that’s approximately one new classroom per month. Surprisingly, Amelia’s life is actually fairly routinized; for example, she and her itinerant handyman dad pick a different subject to master via YouTube in each new town. When they arrive in their latest town near Pittsburgh, Amelia notices that each student’s yearbook picture is captioned with their crowning achievement. She aims to find her special skill over summer break. Amelia flits from one hobby to the next, trying her hand at track, journalism, and even drama, using a different name for each. Trouble ensues when her dog, Biscotti, has a run-in with Ketchup, the dog belonging to Finn, another new kid. Schedule conflicts and other mishaps also create a challenge for Amelia as she attempts to keep her multiple identities hidden. The lives she and her dad have built together since the death of her mother in childbirth may be about to change forever as Dad begins to put down roots. The novel would have benefited from stronger character development to bolster readers’ emotional connections with the themes touched on, including the search for identity during the preteen years, peer relationships, and single-parent families’ experiences. Main characters read White.

Skims the surface in exploring commonly addressed issues.