Merci Suarez is a 6th grade student attending a private school on scholarship. When she begins to mentor a new kid at school she gains the attention of many other students including the mean girl, Edna Santos. This a great book for many middle schoolers as they will have to face their own bullies and will need to know how to navigate that. ( )

2019 Newbery Medal Winner

Merci is a sixth-grader on scholarship at a private school in Florida. Her Cuban-American family lives in "Las Casitas," three houses next to each other where Merci's grandparents, parents, brother, aunt, and twin cousins live.

As Merci deals with standard middle school drama, such as being assigned the new (and very tall) guy Michael Clark as her "Sunshine Buddy" (garnering the ire of the bully Edna who *like* likes him), she also discovers a secret about her grandfather's health that shocks her to her core and changes everything.

This well-written story rang true on multiple painful levels on what it's like to be in middle school. Looking back, I could really identify with Merci as she tried to navigate having to communicate with a particular guy (gasp!) and the social upheaval that caused with other girls. Ouch. Those things can get so ugly... and it's so dumb. Because it's middle school.

I appreciated it that the story was fully about Merci's experience and had nothing to do with "getting the guy." Although she became better friends with Michael, he ultimately ended up dating a third girl (i.e. not Edna either). Merci had a certain amount of awkwardness with him, I think mostly due to his general guyness, but ending with them dating would have felt forced. I liked it that Merci stayed true to herself and at the end began to kind of like a new guy she met who reminded her of her fictional hero from the movies.

Her realization that her grandfather Lolo was sick and finding out he had Alzheimer's was so sad and so real. Nobody in my family has had it, but my grandpa died of a stroke when I was sixteen. It is such a rude awakening to temporal human nature. At first I was as angry as Merci that her family had hidden the diagnosis from her, even to the point that I disliked the book during that part, but it made more sense when it turned out it was Lolo himself who hadn't wanted her to know. I could empathize with him, thinking about what I would do if I were sick and had to tell my daughter. That would be... well, hopefully it won't happen.

I felt frustrated for Merci that she had to give up trying to join the soccer team to help her family and babysit her twin cousins. I could tell her family knew it wasn't fair, but they didn't have good alternatives. It reminded me that there are benefits and costs to having such a close family. It really wasn't fair that they didn't expect more babysitting from Merci's brother. My grandma lived her whole life like that--she was her mother's oldest daughter, and her mother was the oldest of a bunch of kids, so she got passed around to babysit cousins all the time and I don't think had much say in it. Sexist, and totally unfair. I'm not sure the alternative I grew up with, being an only child and not really being close to my cousins, is better, though... it would just be nice if there could be some balance, particularly for girls, so that everybody's needs get met. I didn't think Merci was selfish to want to be on that team so badly.

The bicycle imagery was a nice touch--in the title, in Merci wanting a new bike and saving up for it as a metaphor for her kind of "leveling up" her life experience, and in Lolo's decreasing ability to ride a bike.

Also, the premise in the story of a minority student at a private school on scholarship reminded me of [b:New Kid|39893619|New Kid (New Kid, #1)|Jerry Craft|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1534310236l/39893619._SX50_.jpg|57574554], the 2020 winner, which I read first. I kind of wondered if the Newbery committee was stuck on that theme, but it turned out that the stories were very different, least of all in the format. I'm not even sure Merci *was* in the minority at her school; it seemed like maybe there were other kids with Hispanic names, and Michael Clark was portrayed as a giant white oddity from Minnesota (I liked it when he said "Uff da!" That's my pasty white Scandinavian heritage too, lol). This book was more focused on the issues of maturing and aging, whereas New Kid brought race and class issues to the forefront. ( )

From ALSC: "Eleven-year-old Cuban American Merci Suárez balances the demands of her multi-generational family with the challenges of being a scholarship student at a private school in Florida." From Kirkus: "Medina delivers another stellar and deeply moving story."

Been reading my way through the Newberrys and this one really hit home. Spoiler alert…. The book deals with Alzheimer’s and the family fails to share the diagnosis with the twelve year old protagonist. I lived with my grandmother when she succumbed to Alzheimer’s, and can attest to the authenticity of the incidents related, small things that are horrific. Still very sensitively dealt with. An excellent book ( )

A delightful realistic fiction book that has plenty of complicated real life situations without feeling bleak. Merci is a great character, unsure of herself in the world at an age most children are unsure, and yet confident, creative and a good friend. ( )