The Best Worst Thing
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Front door locked, kitchen door locked, living room windows closed. Nobody in the closet, nobody under the beds.
Still, Maggie is worried. Ever since she started middle school, she sees injustice and danger everywhere--on the news, in her textbooks, in her own neighborhood. Even her best friend seems to be changing.
Maggie believes it is up to her, and only her, to make everything all right. Can she come up with a plan to keep everyone safe?
The Best Worst Thing is a perceptive novel about learning the limits of what you can control, and the good--sometimes even best--things that can come of finally letting go.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Sometimes I wonder when the me I am right now will get covered up by a bigger me, and I wonder who the bigger me will be," worries 10-year-old Maggie. Why doesn't her older sister play with her anymore? What will happen to the baby rabbits next door? Why isn't her father ever home? Will the school bully get a gun? These are just a few of the questions, big and small, that consume Maggie's anxious mind in debut author Lane's emotionally intense coming-of-age story. After a random shooting at a nearby convenience store, Maggie's mind goes into overdrive. Many chapters are only a page long and read like a growing prayer list as Maggie ritualistically soothes her racing mind: "Front door locked, kitchen door locked.... Please don't let anyone kill anyone or anything, please don't let anyone kill anyone or anything." Though there are no tidy beginnings or endings in Maggie's swirling first-person narrative, Lane crafts a powerful portrait of a girl wrangling with deeply relatable concerns, which will easily resonate with readers confronting a complex and uncertain world. Ages 8 12.
