The Ripple Effect
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
When 6th grader Zella’s class prank flops, she’s given a second chance to leave a lasting impact in this middle-grade novel about redemption, friendship, and kindness.
A perfect book club pick to inspire discussion, 9–12-year-old fans of Katherine Applegate’s Wishtree will love this hopeful story about the power of connection.
It’s the end of 6th grade and Zella wants to be the one who thinks of the best class prank—a long-held tradition that administrators allow, with parameters.
In alternating chapters told by Zella, best friends Bowie and Janea, Shelby the school sleuth, and the town of Kettleby, Zella's story reveals her quest to uphold her image as class clown and bask in the spotlight.
As a result, she loses sight of what’s going on in the lives of her two best friends and begins to cause more stress for her mom—who manages their family's failing ice cream shop while caring for Pops. Zella doesn’t mean to cause trouble, but being 12 is hard. Everything is changing, and everyone seems so much cooler and better understood.
When her prank doesn’t go as planned, the entire class is punished, and Zella is to blame. But when Zella's given a second chance, her small, subtle acts of thoughtfulness begin to grow. It turns out that redemption, friendship, and a remarkable chain of kindness tastes even sweeter than her family's famous raspberry ripple ice cream.
With humor and heart, The Ripple Effect's themes of kindness and connection will inspire young readers to even greater compassion and generosity in their own lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
To secure her title as the class clown, sixth grader Marzella Trudi is determined to come up with the best class prank her small town of Kettleby has ever seen. With the help of best friends Bowie, an organized pianist, and Janea, a fashionista with a growing online presence, Zella attempts to generate the perfect idea; she's simultaneously concerned about her family's failing ice cream business and her grandfather's worsening dementia. Zella finally hits on a plan, but when the prank backfires spectacularly, the whole class is punished, and Zella must find a way to make amends. By utilizing alternating first- and third-person narrators—including Zella, Bowie, and Janea, as well as other classmates and Kettleby residents—Caprara (Worst-Case Collin) underscores the importance of community in this saccharine paean to paying it forward. A leisurely buildup shifts gears into rapid-fire snapshots depicting community spirit and the importance of kindness and cooperation, making for a quiet small-town novel that eschews self-reflection and drawn-out conflict for tidy, sometimes passive solutions. Characters are racially diverse. Ages 9–12.
