Jojo vs. Middle School
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
After having hilariously terrible first days of sixth grade, four girls vow to ride out the super highs and cringe-worthy lows of middle school together, no matter how awkward it gets, in this first book in the Team Awkward middle grade series.
Jojo has everything planned out for the perfect first day of middle school, down to her outfit and hairstyle. But when Mom, distracted by her new live-in boyfriend, Paul, forgets to wake Jojo up, she oversleeps and has to make do with leggings, a t-shirt, and her brother’s hoodie.
The day still goes okay until Jojo realizes that she has a hole in her leggings thanks to Purrito, the kitten Paul “gifted” her. Because Paul isn’t just Paul; he’s Mr. Meow, a mega-famous cat-fluencer. Nearly everything in Jojo’s life is now cat-themed—including the underwear that the hole in her leggings is now showcasing to the whole school!
Embarrassed and unable to show her face in the cafeteria, Jojo spends her lunch period in an abandoned locker room. But she isn’t the only one hiding to cope with some major awkwardness. Maybe, with friends by her side, middle school won’t be so bad after all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bybee (A Few of My Favorite Things) and McCullough (Basil & Dahlia) team up in this hilarious series launch. On top of preparing to start sixth grade at Kagan Middle School, Jojo Lopez is struggling to adjust to a new family dynamic after moving in with her mother's well-known catfluencer boyfriend Paul, aka Mr. Meow. And if this arrangement doesn't work out, Jojo, her brother, and her mother will return to the original plan: move to Texas to live with Jojo's abuelos. Despite all the changes, she's excited for her first day of middle school. But everything goes wrong, culminating in a mortifying situation that finds her in Kagan's forbidden hallway, where she encounters fellow classmates Leah, Ryan, and Izzy, all of whom have their own first-day horror stories. As the racially diverse tweens confront challenges relating to perfectionism, busy home lives, and plain old bad luck, they're each aided by their new friends. Depictions of open communication and sincere, vulnerable friendship cultivated amid cat-astrophically laugh-out-loud misadventure offer maturing readers an exceptional model for what fulfilling relationships can look like. Ages 8–12. Agents: (for Bybee) Ann Leslie Tuttle, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret; (for McCullough) Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.
