November 2020 Middle Grade Book Selection | First Editions Club

New York, NY: Penguin Publishing Group (pub: October 6, 2020)
First Edition. Signed.
New in dust jacket.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins’s poignant middle grade novel in verse about coming to terms with indelible truths of family and belonging.

For the most part, Hannah’s life is just how she wants it. She has two supportive parents, she’s popular at school, and she’s been killing it at gymnastics. But when her cousin Cal moves in with her family, everything changes. Cal tells half-truths and tall tales, pranks Hannah constantly, and seems to be the reason her parents are fighting more and more. Nothing is how it used to be. She knows that Cal went through a lot after his mom died and she is trying to be patient, but most days Hannah just wishes Cal never moved in.

For his part, Cal is trying his hardest to fit in, but not everyone is as appreciative of his unique sense of humor and storytelling gifts as he is. Humor and stories might be his defense mechanism, but if Cal doesn’t let his walls down soon, he might push away the very people who are trying their best to love him.

Told in verse from the alternating perspectives of Hannah and Cal, this is a story of two cousins who are more alike than they realize and the family they both want to save.

Ellen Hopkins is a former journalist and the award-winning author of twenty nonfiction books for young readers, fourteen bestselling young-adult novels, and four novels for adult readers. With this book, she is honored to enter the realm of middle-grade fiction. Ellen lives with her extended family, one brilliant German shepherd, a retired rescue cat, and two ponds (not pounds) of koi in the eastern shadow of the Northern Nevada Sierra.