SQUAD GOALS

A high achiever patches up friendships and learns the value of asking for help when she overschedules herself.

For new seventh grader Mackenzie Miller, anything worth doing is worth overdoing—beginning with persistent efforts to get her divorced mom to use a dating app, continuing with Operation Make a New Friend at school after being ghosted by her old bestie, Johanna, and culminating in a frenzy of preparations and planning to raise funds for new band instruments. Whipping up friendship bracelets (step-by-step instructions are appended) and leaving readers breathless in the wake of her narrative rush, this budding force of nature pinballs through a lively intergenerational supporting cast featuring an extended clan of Pakistani Americans led by promisingly unattached next-door neighbor Zane. Sheera Mirza, Zane’s niece and a classmate who joins Mackenzie in an unorthodox after-school arts club, proves a loyal ally when Mackenzie finally admits that in trying to set up the looming fundraiser single-handedly, she’s bitten off more than she can chew. The transformative insight that it’s OK to ask for help leads not only to a spectacularly successful fundraiser, but, by the end, patched-up relations with Johanna and another alienated friend, capped by exciting hints that her mom and Zane might be turning into an item. Mackenzie reads White and has some Greek ancestry.

With this flying start, a young maker makes a strong bid for attention.