Ask Emma (Ask Emma Book 1)

April 1, 2018

Gr 3-6-A contemporary, middle grade retelling of Jane Austen's Emma. Thirteen-year-old Emma Wood attends Austen Middle School and has a tendency to stick her nose into everyone else's business and offer unsolicited advice. In order to share her talents with a broader audience, she starts a blog, "Ask Emma." Unfortunately, her well-meaning interventions don't always go as planned and Emma soon finds herself on the receiving end of some harsh criticism. Undeterred, Emma works to turn a hurtful episode into a positive learning experience. Accessible writing and short chapters make this a comfortable read for middle graders interested in relatively lighthearted realism. Back matter includes resources on cyberbullying. VERDICT A solid addition to larger collections, especially schools in which there is a focus on combatting cyberbullying.-Peggy Henderson Murphy, Wyandot Elementary School, Dublin, OH

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2018
Seventh-grader Emma Woods decides to start an advice blog at school since she's already adept at meddling.Surprisingly, her teachers are fully supportive, putting the blog on the school website. At first there's little interest from fellow students at Austen Middle School (the references will fly over the heads of the audience). After she intervenes with a Spanish teacher to make his classroom management fairer and tries to move a clock forward to end gym class early, however, Emma begins to earn a reputation as an effective mediator, and interest in her blog--as well as push back--picks up. A series of nasty, bullying comments posted on it gives her the opportunity to launch a clever (and a bit didactic if worthwhile) anti-cyberbullying campaign. Convenience plays a heavy role. Teachers and the school principal don't seem to mind her interventions. In a world that's unrealistically convivial, annoyed classmates manage to eventually forgive her failed, sometimes blundering attempts to fix just about everything. Even the disgruntled bully lurks fully offstage, their identity remaining a complete mystery, with the likeliest potential candidates eliminated and the bullying neatly ending as well. But the text is brief and Emma makes a mostly perky and somewhat attractive protagonist, even if she occupies a vanilla-flavored, default-white world, in this first in a series. It remains to be seen whether subsequent volumes will likewise clap back to Jane Austen.An average tale that's most likely to appeal to female grade schoolers who might yet believe that this is an accurate depiction of middle school. (Fiction. 9-11)

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May 1, 2018
Grades 5-8 Emma, 13, finds satisfaction in helping others with their problems, although, as readers quickly learn, her help doesn't always have positive outcomes?as in, telling her best friend her hair would look better with highlights, but inadvertently bleaching a skunklike white streak into it. For her computer class project, Emma begins a seventh-grade advice blog. Unfortunately, her enthusiasm for the project quickly sours as she becomes the target of name-calling and cyberbullying. To her credit, she refuses to quit her blog and uses it to raise awareness about cyberbullying. Her personal, self-deprecating post is nonaccusatory but serious in tone, and, in her final installment, she reminds her classmates that what they write can't be recalled. The year is one of mental, physical, and social growth for the entire class, but especially for Emma. Readers will likely identify an Emma (and her helpful attitude) among their peers, but they'll also see themselves in her classmates. The Berks present a spot-on snapshot of middle-school friendship, awkwardness, and budding romance. Pair with Chris Rylander's The Fourth Stall series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)