Mind over Monsters

April 29, 2024
White seventh grader Lena Lennox is a “champion worrier.” When school administrators invite Lena and six of her similarly anxious Cranberry Bog Middle School classmates to participate in a mindfulness meditation trial meant to help reduce student stress via app, she’s skeptical but hopes it proves beneficial. Though the tweens find the first part of the exercises—“Calming and Clearing Our Minds”—to be useful, strange things occur when they begin part two: “Finding and Facing Our Fears.” Soon, their dread starts manifesting in the physical world as inky, tangible blobs. As the group try to uncover the app’s origins and ascertain how their terrors are becoming real, they must also find a way to keep the administration from deploying the program to the entire school. Uhrig (The Polter-Ghost Problem) keeps a steady pace and intertwines Lena’s encounters with her fear monsters with interpersonal worries surrounding her best friend Gina—now going by Regina—who’s “gone pretty” and started flirting with boys after returning from summer camp. Capably balanced humorous and heartfelt prose depicts kids finding the courage to face their demons, both internal and external. Ages 8–12. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary.

May 15, 2024
Grades 5-7 Taking the ever-popular theme of anxiety in directions both terrifying and droll, Uhrig forces seven nervous middle-schoolers to face their fears--literally, thanks to a magic meditation app. At first, Lena and her six worrywart schoolmates get promising results from a new stress-relieving audio course, but when the soothing voice in their ears starts suggesting they visualize their fears, creepy creatures actually appear, and it's left to the young folk to deal with them. Despite typical tween distractions aplenty, Lena leads her motley cohort into battle with the cry "Worriers, attack!" And in the wake of character notes and thumbnail portraits in an opening gallery, the cast members all display distinctive forms of courage as they squabble and bond into a team, just in time to lead the response when the app gets an uproarious final test on the entire student body. Alongside a mix of physical comedy and poker-faced banter, the author adds dashes of insight into some of anxiety's causes and coping strategies, so there is food for thought mixed into the fun.

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May 15, 2024
What's a chronic worrier to do when a meditation app brings one's fears to life? Seventh grader Lena Lennox worries so much that she literally pulls her hair out, but some of her worries are well founded. Her strong-minded best friend, Regina, has "gone pretty" and turned boy-crazy. Her brisk, problem-solving mother shows little sympathy or patience for Lena's mental health struggles. And when Lena and other anxiety-prone students from Cranberry Bog Middle School are chosen to test the De-stress-o-rama! mindfulness meditation app prior to schoolwide implementation, they discover that the section on facing your fears actually brings those terrors to life. Surprising herself, Lena, who's white, rallies the racially diverse, self-dubbed Worriers into action--but can they protect the entire school? This book features hilariously wry metaphors, observations, and dialogue. Its sensitive portrayal of Lena's struggles with navigating anxiety and relationships rings true. However, overall, the story grapples with its identity: There's a mismatch in tone between the perceptive mental health theme and the humorous horror of the inexplicably incarnated fears and the kids' cartoonworthy attempts to dispel them. In addition, the initial lengthy focus on Lena's worries may lose readers who are in search of horror thrills. While the secondary characters are quirky and fun, especially Lena's father and brother, the six Worriers besides Lena are thinly developed, and readers may find tracking them challenging. A thoughtful anxiety story imperfectly dovetailed with a light horror romp. (character guide, author's note) (Horror. 10-13)

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