It doesn't take a pandemic to introduce drama into the lives of middle-schoolers: they already have plenty going on. It's all there in K. Ibura's When the World Turned Upside Down, a virtuosic middle-grade novel in which four tweenagers who live in the same apartment building must find new ways to relate to their families and to each other after Covid-19 suddenly closes their school.
Life is always difficult for Liam, who has panic attacks and must tend to his younger siblings while their single mom works. For Ben, being stuck indoors means that he can't escape his parents' constant arguing. Ai wishes she saw more of her parents, but her doctor father is always at the hospital and her depressed mother won't leave her bedroom. This is all the harder for Ai because she isn't speaking to her best friend, the conflicted Shayla, who, before their school shuttered, seemed to prefer two other girls' company.
With her first book for kids, Ibura has created a higher-order middle-grade novel by showing a cast transcending their cohort's reputation for self-absorption: together the friends, who are from a range of backgrounds, help a sick neighbor, form their building's "antivirus team" and, after they learn of George Floyd's murder, take a stand against racism. Ai thinks at one point, "Even if her family had lost the ability to show up for one another, she could show up for her neighbors. She had the power to make people's hard times a little easier." So does When the World Turned Upside Down. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author