Torn between polarized parents after a messy divorce, 12-year-old, TV-loving Jake Lightman pleases everyone but himself by adopting different personas for each parent: devout Yaakov when with his mother and secular Jacob with his dad. Jacob sticks to the script of doting son, supposing it is "better to be a few different people that everybody loves than one person everybody hates." At Jake's latest school (his seventh, postdivorce), new friends Caleb and Tehilla convince Jake he can be himself at their beloved Camp Gershoni, with its summertime cabal of girls named Shira and secret handshake. There, the trio stages an elaborate camp bluff that mires Jake in deeper drama before a reckoning that tidily resolves all relationships. Levy (Seventh Grade vs. the Galaxy, 2019) veers from sf in this contemporary-fiction story where positive stepparenting steals the show. Lessons are learned about the risks of compromising for peace and about the importance of bravery even when scared. This comical, authentic, and firmly Jewish caper should play to rave reviews with both secular and spiritual audiences.

An Orthodox Jewish seventh grader who has watched way too much television negotiates new schools and divorced parents.Readers who are familiar with television-land tropes will enjoy this knowingly comic novel, in which an extremely self-conscious Jewish boy processes his experiences as if they were elements of a long-running TV show. At school, he's Forgettable Kid #5, who goes by Jake if asked. But at his mother's house-post-divorce, she's married a rabbi and become extremely Orthodox-he's quiet Yaakov, who wears a black suit and fedora. His father's remarried to a non-Jew and is now fully secular; there, he's lively, goofy Jacob in jeans and T-shirts. His parents have been using the courts to yank him between schools representing various denominations of Judaism, moving him so frequently he can't make friends. But two kids at his latest stop-Broward County Jewish Day School-just won't let him slip into the background. Caleb, who's gone through a lot to come out as gay, and Tehilla, whose mother's low-paying jobs don't always cover the basics, help Jake devise a madcap scheme to join their beloved Jewish summer camp, one too secular for his mother and too religious for his father. The web of lies, the fake camp websites, a wild caper scene at the airport-have they pulled off "the greatest sleepover switcheroo in history"? All characters are presumed White.Astutely depicts the pain of a contentious divorce, the balm of friendship, and the complexity of Jewish culture. (Fiction. 8-12)

Gr 5 Up —This novel has a tropey premise in middle grade novels: the seventh-grade kid caught between warring divorced parents. However, it is distinct from so many others because the root of Jake's angst is his parents' wildly differing approaches to their Jewish faith and culture. Jake's parents can't even agree on his name; Jake's dad calls him Jacob and his mom-or Imma-calls him Yaakov, his Hebrew name. The differences and expectations ramp up from there, causing Jake to create three versions of himself: Yaakov, the Orthodox version, pleasing to his mother; Jacob, the non-observant, earnest math and science student for his dad; and Jake, as he refers to himself, the kid who is just trying to make it through each day. Jake manages to assimilate into his fifth school in two years and makes friends with Caleb and Tehilla, who, like all kids, have their own personal issues. The story takes some unrealistic turns as Jake, Caleb, and Tehilla come up with a convoluted plan for them all to attend a Jewish summer camp, tricking both of Jake's parents into thinking the camp would fit their criteria for appropriate summer activities. Readers might like the story because the kids take the reins and make adult-worthy decisions. But even Jake admits that "turning on subtitles" might be helpful to non-Jewish readers. Not true. Jake does a good job of explaining. The climax contains unrealistic histrionics, but the ending is nice and tidy and will please most readers. VERDICT A representative novel with enough broad drama to circulate in middle grade libraries.—Kim Gardner