Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess
by Shari Green
Intermediate    Pajama    239 pp.
5/17    978-1-77278-033-8    $15.95
Paper ed.  978-1-77278-017-8    $9.95

Macy is fed up with all the changes impinging upon her: she’s finishing sixth grade and will have to move on to a new school and a new sign language interpreter; her mother is getting married to Alan, who already has two young daughters; and her house is now up for sale. In a fit of pique, Macy alienates her best friend — and consequently feels even more disgruntled and isolated. But then Macy’s mother sends her next door to help their elderly neighbor Iris, who’s packing up to move to an assisted living facility. Iris’s words of wisdom and propensity for communicating through cookies (“Oatmeal cookies say / ‘You’re strong enough…you can do this’; peanut butter cookies ‘send joy / and laughter’”) bring Macy solace and understanding as she learns to celebrate the story of her own peculiar family. Green’s free verse makes this a quick, accessible read, focusing on Macy’s realistic reluctance to share her mother and her gradual acceptance of the changes in her life (“Babysitting was actually okay / but I can’t imagine / a lifetime of it,” she comments feelingly). Macy’s deafness is a feature but not the focus of this gently didactic, sympathetic rendering of a twelve-year-old’s angst.

From the September/October 2017 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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