Horn Book (Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

Maggie Diaz is entering seventh grade and feeling left behind. Everyone around her seems to have found the thing they are passionate about, including her best friends, Julian and Zoey, who start deepening their interests in art and band. Maggie joins club after club hoping to discover her passion: Future Leaders, woodshop, even track, despite the fact that her "perfect" sister is a cross-country star. Meanwhile, she's trying to improve her grades in order to get a phone so she can stay connected with her friends. Though her grades don't pick up as quickly as she wants them to, Maggie leans into her unrelenting optimism -- and even doubles down on it. Readers get to spend time with a delightful protagonist growing up in a multigenerational home in Miami, who is pulled in multiple directions due to family obligations, academics, friendships, and extracurricular activities. Maggie doesn't experience immediate success, but she learns from her dad that "everything's tough until it isn't...And then it usually gets tough again. That's life." When she messes up with a friend, Maggie learns the importance of clear and direct communication, and the power of an apology. Illustrations are thoughtfully placed throughout, giving added life to locations, characters, and scenarios. Gabi K. Huesca

Kirkus Reviews

Finding oneself is no easy task.Life has handed Cuban American 12-year-old Maggie Diaz a lot of changes recently. With mom finishing up her accounting degree, a new baby brother, dad traveling for work, and now having to share a room-and a bunk bed-with her abuela, she's glad she can at least count on her two best friends. Maggie has big plans for a superawesome seventh grade year, all hinging on her ability to convince her mother that she is responsible and mature enough to finally get a cellphone. It doesn't help that Caro, her 16-year-old sister, is absolutely perfect-a standard that messy and forgetful Maggie feels like she'll never be able to meet. When her besties seem preoccupied with their own interests, however, Maggie decides to take matters into her own hands and try to discover where her passions lie by joining several school clubs. Becoming overcommitted and (unexpectedly) lonely, Maggie works to tease out her real interests while her plans for a perfect year seem to be crumbling around her. This novel presents an honest portrayal of navigating many of the changes that come with moving from elementary to middle school. Lively, engaging illustrations throughout add detail and visual interest to the narrative. Diverse representation is woven naturally into the story.An upbeat and humorous look at self-discovery. (Fiction. 10-14)

School Library Journal (Fri Jul 01 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

Gr 4–8 —After a boring summer wishing she was at camp like her two best friends, Zoey and Julian, and having to share her bedroom with her abuela, Maggie knows the start of the seventh grade signals big changes for her. When Zoey and Julian start to spend some of their free time in their new clubs with new friends, Maggie is left feeling uncertain, trying to figure out what she might be interested in. Maggie is sure that if she starts to participate in clubs and gets her grades up, she can finally get her own phone and things with her friends can go back to normal. Volunteering to clean beaches and dabbling in woodworking and agriculture are interesting to her, but she is ultimately overwhelmed with all her activities, letting her mom and friends down. Fun and quirky, Maggie Diaz is a character many readers will relate to as she begins to juggle more responsibilities while struggling with insecurity and forgetfulness. The fast-paced, first-person narration reveals these thoughts to readers, who might easily predict the wave that is about to come crashing down on Maggie. The black-and-white and grayscale illustrations add another layer of fun to this accessible middle grade novel, welcoming even more readers to Maggie's world. The heroine discovers the powerful message that not everything has to be checked off a to-do list, and things don't always have to be perfect. VERDICT A solid addition to middle grade collections.—Selenia Paz