Clouds over California
by Karyn Parsons
Intermediate, Middle School    Little, Brown    320 pp.
7/23    9780316484077    $16.99
e-book ed.  9780316497770    $9.99

In an affecting story set in Santa Monica, California, in the 1970s, a young biracial girl at the center of a calamitous family dynamic learns to navigate momentous change and find her own place in the world. Life is not as it should be for eleven-year-old Stevie. Her parents have moved, which means she has to adjust to a new school. She does not make friends easily and is targeted by bullies over her natural hairstyle. Her best friend since third grade abandons their friendship when she joins a clique of mean girls. At home, her parents are constantly fighting because her stay-at-home mother wants to pursue a career over the strenuous objections of her chauvinistic father’s ideas of women’s roles in society. And then an older cousin, Naomi, who is involved with the Black Panther Party and is described as “full of fight,” arrives to live with the family. Parsons’s keenly empathetic portrayal of Stevie and her tribulations is complemented by an equally compelling attention to detail in establishing the era. Particular attention to the social agenda of the Black Panther Party adds validity to the setting. Themes of empowerment, friendship, bullying, interracial marriage (Stevie’s father is white; her mother is Black), trust, divorce, and social justice are interwoven in perfect balance to create a satisfying ending in this honest coming-of-age story.

From the July/August 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.