Chris Makes a Friend

Twelve-year-old bookworm Chris isn’t thrilled about her and her soccer-obsessed younger sister Becca spending the summer with their grandparents in Massachusetts. While away from her Staten Island hometown, Chris notices that the distance prompts her BFF Vicky to shut her out in favor of new friends, causing Chris to withdraw. During her self-imposed isolation, Chris contemplates the ableism her chronically ill mother experiences, her relationship with her mom’s nonbinary girlfriend, and her own gender expression: “I tried calling myself he in my head, just to see, and it was weird and awkward. They was a little better, but still not right.” But when Chris meets newcomer Mia, the two become fast friends, exploring town and talking for hours in Chris’s secluded reading nook by the creek. What follows is a tender exploration of personal growth and change (“Pretty much all of life is an experiment”), which Gino (Green) delivers via Chris’s blunt first-person perspective, her authentic-feeling missteps, and her raw vulnerability, resulting in a perceptive examination of interpersonal connection. Main characters are white-coded. Ages 8–12. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. (Nov.)