by Elisa Stone Leahy
First sentence: “Wendy and Tom sat on the plastic-wrapped sofa in the middle of the sidewalk and stared up at the crooked house.”
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Content: There is bullying and name calling and both racist microagressions as well as racist behavior. It’s in the Middle Grades (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.I read this book for the Cybils, and this reflects my opinion and not that of the whole panel.

Wendy’s family used to live in a bustling Latine neighborhood of their Ohio town, one where there were lots of families like hers. But then La Migra – ICE – started taking more and more people; parents would disappear, families gone overnight. And Wendy’s parents became unnerved. So they found the cheapest fixer-upper in a nearby town, one that was more white, in hopes that La Migra would leave them alone. Because, while Wendy’s dad was adopted by an American relative when he was little, and Wendy and Tom were born in America, Wendy’s mom has a green card, and maybe that’s not quite enough for ICE. The best thing is to keep their heads down and not make any waves.

Except, at Wendy’s new, mostly white, school for gifted student, she’s finding it hard to keep her head down. She make friends with a Black girl, K. K.; and a Muslim one, Yasmin; and the daughter of a white pastor who is giving sanctuary to a woman whom ICE is trying to deport. And when their little group becomes targets for the richer, whiter kids in school, things get, well, a bit messy.

It sounds like a lot, and it is, but Leahy makes it work. Wendy is the first-generation daughter of immigrant parents, and Leahy weaves that in. She weaves in treating those who are looking for a new, better home in America humanely. She weaves in STEM – Wendy is fascinated with space and astronomy and wants to be an astrophysicist. And she weaves in the real ways in which white kids absorb the opinons and actions of their parents. You can tell what kind of parents the kids have by the way their kids treat those not like them.

It’s a good book with a good heart, and some tense moments. And in the end, I loved how everyone grew, learned, and changed for the better.