SUNNY PARKER IS HERE TO STAY

A rising middle schooler fights for more affordable housing in her wealthy town.

Sunny Parker, a white 11-year-old, has no plans for the summer other than helping her widowed dad, who works as the manager of Del Mar Garden Apartments, the affordable housing complex where they live. On a walk through the wealthy neighborhood surrounding Del Mar, Sunny and Mrs. Garcia, her neighbor and mom figure, see that the site of a nearby closed elementary school is being considered for building more affordable housing. Mrs. Garcia, who says that “money breeds mean,” doesn’t think the mostly high-income townsfolk will support the measure; when she’s proven right, Sunny and her best friend, Haley, who’s Black, embark on a campaign to change hearts and minds, even though Sunny’s own father disapproves of their activism. The ethnically diverse Del Mar residents, including a young Ukrainian single mom who’s being abused by her boyfriend, are well drawn, but the rich people are mostly presented without nuance as being against the “lowlifes” whom they believe an affordable housing complex would bring. Finnegan doesn’t explain the concept of affordable housing in a way that feels clear enough for middle-grade readers to understand, although they will grasp that Sunny and her neighbors are being denigrated. Sunny’s dad is enigmatic; the emotional ending involving him, while well written, seems to come out of nowhere.

Well intended but lacking in execution.