Chirp

This pick has the distinguished honor of convincing me to try cricket flour. It also manages to present a layered storyline, one that combines an almost classic mystery plot with a traumatized character’s journey of self-healing. This book serves as a powerful reminder that we are more than the incidents that victimized us. And yes, even an insect hater like me enjoyed learning so much about the many uses of crickets! 

This wonderful new-girl-in-town novel is a mystery and also the story of rising eighth-grader Mia’s #MeToo experience. A talented gymnast, Mia quit gymnastics after a bad fall off the balance beam – and an even more upsetting incident with her coach, which she can’t tell anyone about. As Mia works to help her entomologist grandmother make a go of a cricket farm, and to solve the mystery of who’s sabotaging the farm, she slowly finds the courage to speak up about what has happened to her.

I loved how Kate Messner wove many different #MeToo experiences into this novel. It’s… show more.

When 12-year-old Mia moves to a Vermont town at the start of summer, she enrolls in two-day camps – “Warrior Camp,” for ninja warriors, and “Launch Camp for Young Entrepreneurs.” For the latter, Mia decides to help her grandmother’s struggling cricket farm. But when serious problems arise at the farm, sabotage is suspected. While looking for the saboteur and trying to boost business, Mia finds the courage to “chirp,” or speak up, about important issues to her – including a secret she’s been carrying about her former gymnastics coach. I love all the layers in this book: the strong female… show more.

I’m a huge fan of Kate Messner’s writing, and this book hooked me with the title–and then I found out that it’s about a cricket farm! Bugtastic! Mia has just moved to Vermont so her family can be closer to her grandmother and suspects that someone is trying to sabotage her grandmother’s cricket farm. Can she find the culprit and help save the business? The book is a mystery but also a story of finding your voice.