Meena Meets Her Match

September 15, 2018
A happy, loud, and messy third-grader meets obstacles at home and school in this novel for Junie B. graduates.First-person narrator Meena loves color and finds beauty in the trash she adds to her large collection of found objects she saves for Inspiration. But although Meena surrounds herself with every color of the rainbow, a "gray haze" has crept into her life. First, her best friend, Sofía, stops playing with Meena at recess so she can stay in and get ahead on schoolwork. Then Meena has a seizure. In Meena's imaginative mind, the word "seizure" sounds like "sea" and "treasure." Of course, the reality is not as colorful or as pleasant as the word sounds. As Meena waits for a diagnosis to explain it, she continues on as her creative self, building a milk-jug igloo with her adoring little sister, Rosie, and their nature-loving cousin Eli. When Meena learns the truth about why she and Sofía aren't friends anymore, she discovers that everyone struggles with something, even people who seem to be the best at everything. The grayscale artwork seems to come straight from an anime coloring book. Meena and her family are white, but she wishes she had Latina Sofía's brown skin instead of her own "peachy-blah" tone. Meena's epilepsy diagnosis doesn't overpower the story, making it just one part of her well-rounded character.A likable protagonist helms this appealing school story. (author's note) (Fiction. 8-12)

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November 1, 2018
Grades 3-5 Nine-year-old Meena is energetic, creative, and tenacious. She loves all the colors in the rainbow and makes it her mission to bring color into her life every day, even making art out of the materials she finds in her neighbor's recycling. Meena's dad tells her that everyone goes through ups and downs, but lately, Meena has been feeling odd, and her days have been filled with downs. She scribbles on her class work instead of coloring, she's been feeling sick to her stomach for a while, and worst of all, her best friend Sof�a has stopped hanging out with her. Then Meena's teacher assigns a project: decorating Valentine's Day boxes. Meena's determined to make the best, brightest box ever and put the color back in her life. Occasional black-and-white line drawings enhance the text, which is suitable for younger middle-grade readers. Manternach draws from her knowledge of her own nine-year-old daughter's chronic condition in describing Meena, adding a solid foundation to a story about how to grab all the colors in life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)