Fifty-Four Things Wrong with Gwendolyn Rogers
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
From the critically acclaimed author of the ALA Notable
and Charlotte Huck Honor Book Forever, or a Long, Long Time comes a
moving own-voices story that shines a light on how one girl’s learning differences are neither right nor wrong…just perfectly individual. For fans of Alyson
Gerber, Cammie McGovern, and Kathryn Erskine.
No one can figure out what
Gwendolyn Rogers’s problem is—not her mom, or her teachers, or any of the many
therapists she’s seen. But Gwendolyn knows she doesn’t have just one thing
wrong with her: she has fifty-four.
At least, according to a confidential
school report (that she read because she is #16. Sneaky, not to mention #13.
Impulsive). So Gwendolyn needs a plan, because if she doesn’t get these
fifty-four things under control, she’s not going to be able to go to horse camp
this summer with her half-brother, Tyler.
But Tyler can’t help her because there’s only one thing
“wrong” with him: ADHD.
And her best friend Hettie can’t help her because there’s
nothing wrong with Hettie. She’s perfect.
So Gwendolyn is hopeless until she remembers the one thing
that helped her mother when her own life was out of control. Or actually, the twelve
things. Can these Twelve Steps that cured her mother somehow cure Gwendolyn
too?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carter (How to Be a Girl in the World) draws from her own experience of undiagnosed ADHD and dyslexia in this moving, authentically told story. Every night, blonde Wisconsin fifth grader Gwendolyn reads the list of 54 takeaways she noted from a school report mailed to her home, all of which have her believing she's "sometimes not a good student or daughter or person in general." She wishes she could live up to her single mother's expectations, but she finds her PowerKids after-school program challenging, and an outburst at the local stables, the only place she feels fully herself, has gotten her banned. So when PowerKids offers a summer horse camp, and Tyler—Gwendolyn's recently discovered half brother, who is of Greek descent and has struggles similar to hers—Gwendolyn determines to fix whatever is "wrong" with her. Carter provides searing descriptions of Gwendolyn's attempts at "appropriate" behavior ("I'm going to be good today. I just know it"), as well as of the school's differing class- and gender-related expectations for more privileged, already-diagnosed Tyler and still-searching Gwendolyn ("It's like being bad is just one thing about him and not everything about him"). A compassionate portrait of what a diagnosis can offer. Ages 8–12.
