Please Pay Attention

In this sensorial verse novel by Sumner (Deep Water), a disabled eighth grader navigates trauma in the aftermath of a school shooting. Kind and outspoken Bea Coughlin, who lives with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, confidently advocates for disability accommodations at her small private school. When her teacher and several students are killed during a school shooting, Bea’s sense of safety crumbles (“My loosened leg brace catches/ on the footrest of my chair/ and/ it’s pinning me here!”). The novel is divided into four parts—“Seek,” “Hide,” “Heal,” and “Hope”—that showcase Bea’s life before, during, and after the event via narrative poems and letters addressed to an entity called Sir. Throughout, Bea struggles to understand the incident; intimate, lyrical verse relays her experiences, including her horseback riding therapy and feelings of claustrophobia at being indoors in the days following the shooting. It’s an accessible and cohesive interpretation of what it means to live with grief and find a way to feel like oneself after tragedy, as well as an homage to young voices and their impact on society. Bea reads as white. Ages 10–up. (Apr.)