A Perfect Mistake
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A moving, voice-driven novel about friendship, responsibility, and fighting against unfair expectations, for fans of Rebecca Stead and Erin Entrada Kelly.
Max wishes he could go back in time to before he was diagnosed with ADHD, before he grew to be the tallest kid in his class, and before he and his best friends went into the woods in the middle of the night. Max doesn’t remember what happened after he left his friends Will and Joey and the older kids who took them there. He’s not sure if he wants to remember. Knowing isn’t going to make Joey talk to him again, or bring Will out of his coma.
When the local authorities run out of leads, Max realizes that without his help, they may never know what really happened to Will. Charged by the idea that he may be the key to uncovering the truth, Max pairs up with classmate and aspiring journalist Sam to investigate what really happened that night. But not everyone in the community wants that night to be remembered.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Adeptly examining potential culpability around a mysterious tragedy's aftermath, Conklin's compassionate (Every Missing Piece) contemporary whodunit centers a kid managing his recent ADHD diagnosis. At the start of sixth grade in a New Jersey suburb, Max is struggling on several fronts: he's learning how to navigate his "inattentive type" ADHD; his close "Three Broskateers" bond with friends Joey and Will is disintegrating; and he finds being a nearly-six-foot-tall 11-year-old frustrating when adults suddenly expect him to act grown. The weekend prior to this book's start, he and Max pressure Will to sneak out at night and visit a graffitied railway roundhouse hangout deep in the woods. The next morning, Max doesn't remember the details of the night, but he recalls enough to feel extreme guilt, which is further heightened when he learns that Will is in a medically induced coma. Together with classmate and aspiring journalist Samantha, the narrator resolves to discover what happened—including his own part in the accident. Lightly touching on social complexities that range from interpersonal assumptions to the uncertainty and pain of changing relationships, Conklin's emotionally grounded mystery imbues Max's quest for truth with a perceptive portrait of a kid learning to understand his ADHD. All characters read as white. Ages 8–12.
