WELCOME BACK, MAPLE MEHTA-COHEN

Eleven-year-old Maple Mehta-Cohen loves words.

She loves hearing her father read books aloud to her before bedtime, and she loves dictating her own stories into the digital voice recorder that she keeps in her pocket at all times—she dreams up mysteries about a sleuth called Mira Epstein-Patel. Maybe that’s why it took until fifth grade for a teacher to finally notice that Maple has serious struggles with reading. After screening tests reveal that she exhibits characteristics of dyslexia, Maple learns that, unlike her best friends, she is going to have to repeat the fifth grade. Although her friends assure her that nothing has to change between them, on the first day of school, they ignore her. In her new fifth grade classroom, Maple tries to connect with people, but her attempts are tripped up by her embarrassment, and she lies about why she’s been held back. Struggling with her friendships and her self-esteem, Maple wonders who she’s become—and how she can get back to being her old self, a person that she once truly loved. Maple’s narratorial voice is frank and quirky, and her journey with coming to terms with her learning disability is layered, believable, and well researched. Maple has a White Jewish mother and an Indian father who coined the term Hin-Jew to describe her. The book repeatedly references her Indian identity, but her Jewish side is less developed.

A layered, utterly readable novel about a biracial protagonist grappling with dyslexia.