Ode to a Nobody
by Caroline Brooks DuBois
Middle School    Holiday    304 pp.
12/22     9780823451562    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780823454044    $11.99

In this verse novel, eighth grader Quinn is dealing with a lot of tension and change: her parents are constantly fighting, her best friend is drifting away, and her own sense of self is shifting. Then a tornado hits her neighborhood; her day-to-day life is disrupted, and fissures in her closest relationships are cracked wide open. The story unfolds in three parts: “The Before,” “During and Immediately After,” and “The After.” Throughout her ­honest ­first-person narration, Quinn takes refuge in writing and, with a sympathetic teacher’s encouragement, slowly begins to see herself as a poet. School assignments introduce her to a variety of forms, such as acrostic, cinquain, diamante, and found poems. Eventually she shares her own evocative free verse: “I’m going to keep / write-thinking / on who / I mean / to be”; “Choose a path—and do what it takes / to walk it, even when it hurts.” DuBois moves back and forth between adolescent angst in a conversational voice and insightful reflection full of metaphor and personification in this thought-provoking novel.

From the January/February 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.