Sixth grader Dee is having a hard time fitting in at school until she accidentally becomes a tween counselor to the other kids in Happy & Sad & Everything True, Alex Thayer's heartening and clear-sighted middle-grade debut.
Seventeen days ago, Dee started sixth grade in a different class than her best friend, Juniper. While Dee is hiding in the bathroom counting ceiling tiles ("It's way better to feel alone with yourself, than alone in a crowd"), Juniper has been making friends with the popular girls. When Dee overhears a bathroom conversation between an unseen group of girls calling her "Smelly. Weird. Gross," she becomes even more self-conscious. Then a voice needing support comes through the heating grate that connects the girls' and boys' bathrooms. Suddenly Dee is offering advice to kids of all ages from the anonymity of the bathroom. But can she solve her own biggest problem and restore her friendship with Juniper?
Happy & Sad & Everything True offers a nuanced, sometimes painfully realistic portrait of middle school. Dee has great ideas and a heart for helping people but is plagued by self-doubt and insecurity. The questions other kids bring her alternate between practical and deeply ethical, all while feeling true to the characters' ages. Growing up is scary, painful, and sometimes mortifying, but as Thayer shows, it can also be empowering and full of wonderful opportunities. This debut offers no sugar-coated simplicities or solutions but instead couples the trials of early adolescence with its profound moments of self-discovery and new-found community. --Kyla Paterno, freelance reviewer