Pavi Sharma's Guide to Going Home

May 27, 2019
After living with four families, Indian American Pavi Sharma, 12, regards herself as a foster care expert. She has developed a business helping foster kids from her former shelter adjust to new homes, teaching her clients how to greet their new family (using “Front Door Face”) and collecting Hot Cheetos and school supplies as payment. But Pavi’s meticulously ordered life is upended when she meets Meridee, a small girl who is days away from being placed with Pavi’s neglectful first foster family. Pavi prefers to keep her business separate from her current life with her nurturing foster mother and her kind foster brother Hamilton, who is Pavi’s age. But remembering with visceral fear the vicious dog fights that took place in the backyard, Pavi decides to use her knowledge of the foster care system to prevent what she is sure will be a disastrous placement, reluctantly enlisting the help of her client Santos, Hamilton, and Hamilton’s pal Piper. Despite the heavy subject matter, debut author Farr keeps the story moving swiftly, skillfully weaving in moments of tension that allow her diverse cast of flawed yet sympathetic characters to shine. Ages 8–12. Agent: Melissa Edwards, Stonesong.

August 15, 2019
Twelve-year-old Pavi Sharma, who has bounced from foster home to foster home, has become a small-business owner of sorts: For a fee (Hot Cheetos), she teaches other foster children what she has learned. When she learns that 5-year-old Meridee is to be placed in Pavi's traumatic first foster home, she pulls together a ragtag gang--her foster mother's biological son, Hamilton; his best friend, Piper; and Santos, a formidable eighth grader who is also a foster child--in order to save Meridee from Pavi's fate. Pavi reads like a standard-issue plucky and quirky (she likes Cheetos and stationery) middle-grade heroine. She is Indian American, but she has no real connection to her cultural background even though she lived with her troubled, Hindi-speaking mother till she was 9. Indeed, Marjorie, Pavi's current foster mother, makes an effort to learn to make "Indian food," including a "few types of curries" and "treats like samosas and biryani," but Pavi is actively incurious. Whether this is due to trauma or not, the failure of the narrative to flesh out her background leaves readers with a flattened, generic sense of India and its cultures. The book includes a fun subplot involving Piper's YouTube beauty channel and Hamilton's participation in a goth makeup tutorial. But readers will want to know more about Pavi's past and her place in the world, beyond just being a foster child. Meridee and Santos are children of color, reflecting foster-child demographics, while Marjorie, Hamilton, and Piper are white. In divorcing this protagonist of color from her background, this novel misses the mark. (Fiction. 8-12)

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September 27, 2019

Gr 4-6-After years in foster care and shelters, 12-year-old Pavi finally has a secure, happy home life with mom Marjorie and brother Hamilton. She's even a straight-A student. Still, Pavi's time in the foster system has taken its toll. She feels "tiny, smaller than the space between protons and neutrons," and helping fellow foster kids adjust to their placements makes her feel "bigger." For her professional services-research on their new families and tips on fitting in-kids pay Pavi in snacks and school supplies. Work for her newest client is pro bono: young Meridee, who's scheduled to be placed in the same nightmarish home Pavi had been in years ago. To save Meridee, Pavi risks everything she's achieved at home and school, enlisting Hamilton and his friend Piper in her scheme. Debut author Farr creates a smart, savvy, relatable character in Pavi. The girl is vulnerable yet not above using others' sympathy for her foster background to her advantage, especially to get what she wants from adults. Hamilton and Piper are perfect foils; his caring stability balances Pavi's impulsiveness, and Piper's glossy entitlement epitomizes all the privileges Pavi never had. The narrative zips between Pavi's home, school, and foster center as she concocts one plan after another to help Meridee, culminating in an action-comedy climax that gives Pavi unexpected insight into her former foster parents' lives. VERDICT A fresh, feel-good story that will make readers cheer and appreciate the home and family they may take for granted.-Marybeth Kozikowski, Sachem Public Library, Holbrook, NY

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Narrator Ariana Cordero gives a fresh, youthful voice to precocious, straight-A foster kid Pavi Sharma in this feel-good story. Twelve-year-old Pavi is happy and thriving in her current foster family, but she hasn't forgotten the struggles foster kids face. So she provides a package of services for fellow foster kids, researching their new families and schools in exchange for snacks and school supplies. When a girl named Meridee is placed in Pavi's nightmarish former foster home, Pavi enlists an unlikely trio of middle schoolers, including her eighth-grade "client," Santos; her foster brother, Hamilton; and his best friend, Piper, to help save Meridee. Cordero's voice expertly reflects all the kids' personalities: Pavi's can-do confidence, Santos's cool aloofness, Hamilton's kind loyalty, and Piper's whiny sense of entitlement. S.C. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

August 1, 2019
Grades 4-6 A bit of a loner, Pavi runs her own clandestine business, helping less experienced foster kids learn the ropes. Actually, she would do that even if her clients didn't pay her with Hot Cheetos and school supplies. When she meets Meridee, an African American kindergartner who's about to be placed in the foster home where Pavi was traumatized four years earlier, this seventh-grader switches from coaching into action. She snoops through files at the agency, spies on her former foster home, and reluctantly accepts help from her supportive foster brother and her few friends. In her first novel, Farr places a complex main character in a challenging situation. Smart, perceptive, and prickly, Pavi may be enigmatic to her classmates, but to readers, she comes across as an empathetic girl who has learned from her foster care experiences that it's especially hard to find forever families for black and brown kids. Her story is well imagined and the pacing is good, but it's Pavi's convincing first-person narration that gives this chapter book its momentum and its undeniable appeal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)