Also, you may have noticed that all my posts for the last month have been like. Waiting on Wednesday and Blog Hop posts and that's kind of it. That's because I was sick a whole bunch and blogging got away from me. I'm putting an extra review here, though, to try to help with getting caught up. Wish me luck and let's get into the review!
Blended by Sharon M. DraperPublished: October 30th, 2018
Genre: Contemporary MG
Binding: ARC
Page Count: 310 in mine, but goodreads says 288. I don't have a finished copy to check.
Part of a series? As far as I know, no.
Got via: It was sent to me for review consideration.
Amazon / Book Depository / Indiebound And also I just saw a tweet from the author mentioning that you can apparently get it signed from Barnes and Noble? So that would be a really good gift honestly.
Summary (from goodreads): "You’re so exotic!” “You look so unusual.” “But what are you really?”
Eleven-year-old Isabella is used to these kinds of comments - her father is black, her mother is white - but that doesn't mean she likes them. And now that her parents are divorced (and getting along WORSE than ever), Isabella feels more like a push-me-pull-me toy.
One week she’s Isabella with her dad, his girlfriend Anastasia, and her son Darren living in a fancy house where they are one of the only black families in the neighborhood. The next week she’s Izzy with her mom and her boyfriend John-Mark in a small, not-so-fancy house that she loves.
Being split between Mom and Dad is more than switching houses, switching nicknames, switching backpacks: it’s also about switching identities. If you’re only seen as half of this and half of that, how can you ever feel whole?
Review: This was absolutely wonderful. I've been saying lately that people who only read YA need to be paying more attention to MG because it is doing some really amazing things now more than ever, and this is one serious example of that. There are so many things that I really liked about this, and I think it is going to be such a well-loved book by kids, especially kids who find themselves represented in this because the author writes about those things with such care and respect.
I obviously can't speak to the experience of being mixed race, but my parents split up when I was a kid and there was a lot of custody stuff, and I can tell you that if I'd owned this as a kid, I would have read it about a million times. This is the weirdest comparison, but does anyone remember the "Little Sisters" spin-off from the Baby-Sitter's Club books? I read those books even after I was way above the age they were aimed at because Karen's parents were divorced and I was drawn to that. There are moments when I was reading where I was just like "hey, me too". Isabella's family switches on Sundays and my father's custody day was Sunday, and when she said she hated Sundays, I was like "same".
It's just such a good book, honestly.
Plot Talk: This takes place over the course of a few months, which I think works really well because you see how things affect Isabella and how things change and grow for her over a longer period of time. Again, this is something I personally would have liked a lot as a kid, and I think others will as well. That works really well in MG especially, and very much here. I also then don't feel so bad for the main character for having so much stuff thrown at them in a really short time period when they're so young if the time frame is longer. I know it's kind of silly, but I just want them to have a break sometimes.
Characters: Isabella is adorable and I loved her voice. It took me like a week to read this, but that was just because I was busy and really not sleeping very well, but her voice kept drawing me back in every time I picked it up. It's really great. She's got a little bit of snark, but she's also very sweet and a little shy, and not sure of herself, and she just grabbed my cold little heart.
I also really want to give kudos to the author for how she wrote Isabella's parents. It was actually great that they didn't always get along very well, and that sometimes they weren't very nice to each other and still fought sometimes and were sometimes kind of mean. It's obviously not great for Isabella, but it's realistic, and that's important for kids to see. That kind of things happens. Plus, it's nice to see them beginning to work through things. Even if they're not perfect, they're trying.
Both of Isabella's parents are in new relationships, and she has wonderful relationships with both of her parents' partners. They care about her, and support her, and want the best for her, and it's great to see a (...no pun intended) blended family like that in a book. Nobody's perfect, but they're good people who love her and who she loves.
Thought there was an amount of people who aren't so good... that sounds odd. The book doesn't shy away from the fact that Isabella deals with racism, and that includes people Isabella likes, like a boy she has a crush on, or a salesperson she thinks is cool, and in a lot of those situations, it's a microaggression. That's something that a lot of kids are going to have experience with.
PG-13 stuff: There's some big stuff in this. Besides things like divorce, Isabella's class talks about school shootings, and the racism in the book goes beyond microaggressions. Isabella's friend finds a noose in her locker, and deals with that for a lot of the book, including when she and Isabella are kicked out of a store in the mall for their skin colour.
And this is something that's hard to write, and something that I honestly did not to expect from a middle grade book, but this book needs a trigger warning for police brutality and gun violence. Near the end of the book, Isabella and her step-brother Darren are pulled over by the police, and one of them shoots her. She's okay, but... I didn't expect that and kind of cried a little myself, so be aware of that especially when you're recommending this.
Don't get me wrong here. I think this is absolutely needed and I personally think the age recommendation on the ARC of 8-12 is appropriate, but we as adults need to be aware of this, and not to leave kids to deal with the emotions this book may leave them with alone and without support. I think especially if you're a white adult who's recommending this to children who aren't white, you need to make sure that those children are going to be okay afterwards. But that's not something negative about the book, at all, okay?
Cons, complaints, bad stuff, etc.: There's some ableist language that could have been left out, and a bit of fatmisic language. It also rather lacks in queer rep or disability rep or really any fat rep besides her step-dad being called "slightly overweight" which is kind of gross language, so, eh. Mostly just nitpicking, though.
Cover comments: I love the cover. I especially love the detail of Isabella's hair having little fly-aways popping out since she talks a lot about how her hair beats the butt of every gel and hairspray she tries. The two ice creams blending together is cool, too. It's a great cover.
Conclusion: I'm glad I finally got my butt into gear and read this. I cried a few times, I laughed a bunch, and I just really liked it. I'm about to eat my arm because I'm suddenly starving, so that's all I've got for now, but I highly recommend this one. Half a point off for the stuff I mentioned in my complaints section, but I'm giving this one four and a half roses.
Other notes:
- People kept taking their shoes off when they came inside and as a Canadian who Notices when people in American media don't, I appreciated that.
- Isabella's in sixth grade if that helps anyone with age recommendations for this. I'd say mature fourth graders and up could handle it personally, as a general guide, but again, be there to support them after.
- I liked the name-dropping of Jason Reynolds as "some new guy" who wrote poetry, lol.
- Isabella's friend is the child of activists, and that was cool. That's something we need to see more of as we go forward in YA and MG.
Peace and cookies,
Laina
