UNSTUCK, by Barbara Dee, Aladdin, Feb. 27, 2024, Hardcover, $17.99 (ages 9-13)
A girl’s goal to write a fantasy novel triggers writer’s block and anxiety in Unstuck, a new middle-grade book by Barbara Dee.
Lyla is thrilled when her seventh-grade English language arts class begins a daily creative writing project. For the past year, she’s been writing a brilliant fantasy novel in her head, and here’s her chance to get it on paper! The plot to Lyla’s novel is super complicated, with battle scenes and witches and a mysterious one-toed-beast, but at its core, it’s about an overlooked girl who has to rescue her beautiful, highly accomplished older sister.
But writing a fantasy novel turns out to be harder than simply imagining one, and pretty soon Lyla finds herself stuck, experiencing a panic she realizes is writer’s block. Part of the problem is that she’s trying to impress certain people—like Rania, her best friend who’s pulling away, and Ms. Bowman, the coolest teacher at school. Plus, there’s the pressure of meeting the deadline for the town writing contest. A few years ago, Lyla’s superstar teen sister Dahlia came in second, and this time, Lyla is determined to win first prize.
Finally, Lyla confides about her writing problems to Dahlia, who is dealing with her own academic stress as she applies to college. That’s when she learns Dahlia’s secret, which is causing a very different type of writer’s block. Can Lyla rescue a surprisingly vulnerable big sister, both on the page and in real life? —Synopsis provided by Aladdin
How many of us have set out to accomplish something big only to get stuck in the process?
That’s what happens to Lyla in Unstuck. She desperately wants to make her book perfect and impress her classmates, family and friends, and that desire gets in the way. Lyla has the book all planned out in her head, but every time she tries to set pen to paper, she can’t quite get the words right. So, she doesn’t write. Or she writes and rewrites the first couple of sentences so many times that they’re illegible.
As Lyla’s writer’s block gets worse, so do her relationships. Life outside the classroom seems to mirror her struggles, and everything keeps piling on.
Lyla is the kind of character that you not only can identify with, but that you want to root for. She’s got all these imaginative ideas swirling around in her head that add dimension to her already well-realized character.
Author Barbara Dee expertly captures not only Lyla’s voice, but that of her age group. Middle-readers will immediately relate to the setting, trials and triumphs.
Unstuck is a smooth-moving contemporary novel that hits all the right notes. It’s a great one for individual reading, but also has multiple applications in the classroom. And, as an added bonus, Dee includes a list of 25 strategies to help with writer’s block.
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