Guest Post Biography:
Hi! I’m Sondra
Eklund, a Librarian at Fairfax County Public Library in Virginia. I worked with your librarian a long time ago
in a library in Germany on an American Air Force Base, and she asked me to write
a guest post for your blog. You can find
more of my reviews at Sonderbooks.com.
Recently, I had the incredible experience of being on the 2019 Newbery Selection Committee, with the job of choosing the most distinguished American children’s book published in 2018. During that year, I read 904 eligible children’s books (okay, 592 of those were picture books) and more than 100,000 pages! Our committee of 14 people met in a locked room in Seattle and discussed and argued about the books we read until we came up with one winner and two honor books. So for my guest review, I’m presenting our winner, Merci Suárez Changes Gears, by Meg Medina, the winner of the 2019 Newbery Medal.
Merci Suárez Changes Gears
Author: Meg Medina
Publisher: Candlewick
Press, 2018
Characters: Merci Suárez,
her Mami and Papi, brother Roli, grandmother Abuela, grandfather Lolo, aunt Tía
Inéz
and little twin cousins, plus classmates including a snobby girl Edna Santos
and an interesting new boy Michael Clark
Plot: Merci’s
starting sixth grade at a private school, on scholarship because her Papi does
maintenance there, and Edna the most popular girl in the class looks down on
her. The school asks her to do community
service being Sunshine Buddy to a new boy, and Edna doesn’t like that. Merci wants to be on the soccer team, but her
family expects her to babysit her twin cousins.
And during all of this, her beloved Lolo is acting strangely and asks
Merci not to tell the rest of the family about it.
Setting: Florida,
with a Cuban-American family
Genre: Contemporary
Children’s Novel
Theme: You can
navigate change with the help of your friends and family!
Style: Realistic, with plenty of humor sprinkled throughout. Told from Merci’s point of view.
🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁
Critical Analysis: This book for upper elementary and middle school students does a great
job of showing us a character with lots of pressures on her coming from
different directions who doesn’t roll over and let those pressures destroy
her. The author puts in lots of humor as
Merci sticks up for herself and makes her case, whether it’s classmates
treating her badly or her own parents being unfair. We get the flavor of Merci’s loving
Cuban-American family, and even the bully at school turns out to have some
positive qualities.
Why 5 Roars? This was
*our* winner! I read it multiple times
and discussed it with the committee and met the author and I will always and
forever love this book!
Connections: Read the
two Honor books our committee chose:
The Book of Boy, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
The Night Diary, by Veera Hiranandani
Check out Sonderbooks by Sondra Eklund for more great reviews like this one!
*Sonder is a German prefix meaning "Special."
