Spin with Me
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the critically acclaimed Gracefully Grayson comes a thoughtful and sensitive middle-grade novel about non-binary identity and first love, Ami Polonsky's Spin with Me.
In this elegant dual narrative, Essie is a thirteen-year-old girl feeling glum about starting a new school after her professor dad takes a temporary teaching position in a different town. She has 110 days here and can't wait for them to end. Then she meets Ollie, who is nonbinary. Ollie has beautiful blue eyes and a confident smile. Soon, Essie isn’t counting down the days until she can leave so much as she’s dreading when her time with Ollie will come to an end.
Meanwhile, Ollie is experiencing a crush of their own . . . on Essie. As Ollie struggles to balance their passion for queer advocacy with their other interests, they slowly find themselves falling for a girl whose stay is about to come to an end. Can the two unwind their merry-go-round of feelings before it's too late?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This dual-perspective ode to the joys and complications of first love follows Essie Rosenberg, a white girl from St. Louis, who is upset that she must spend the first semester of seventh grade in North Carolina, where her father is a visiting professor. Counting down the days until she can return home, Essie's outlook begins to shift when she meets—and immediately begins crushing on—classmate Ollie, who is white and nonbinary. Essie's feelings seem requited, but the duo only have until the end of the school year to navigate their budding relationship. Polonsky (Gracefully Grayson) sensitively handles Ollie's gender identity while fully fleshing out their character. The first half of the novel describes the semester from Essie's point of view, while the second part shares Ollie's perspective, revealing that Ollie is struggling to forge an identity outside of their work as an LGBTQ advocate and is not as confident and collected as Essie believes. Repeated scenes and conversations from various points of view sometimes prove tedious, but the novel makes a compelling argument, reinforced by an extended optical illusion metaphor, for looking at the world from another's lens. Ages 8–12.
