Miss Match (Orca Currents)

Written by Susan Hughes

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-459842069

144 pp.

Ages 9–12

RL 2.8 

April 2025 

With Grade 8 almost finished and summer just weeks away, thirteen-year-old Polly, along with her friends Dev, Zoey, Roger and Matt, starts thinking about how to make a little money for summertime fun like going to the movies and baseball games, enjoying fast food, and shopping. Polly, ever the entrepreneur, comes up with the idea of a matchmaking service for all the Grade 7 and 8 students attending the end-of-year dance.

When they advertise their service and get students to submit applications with a $20 fee–money-back guarantee–they are overwhelmed with responses. They pull in over $2000 and Polly is tasked with setting up a dedicated bank account for the money. When she is unable to do so, Polly lies. It becomes the first of several lies she makes to her friends and her mother to cover up her embarrassment and fears of how they will judge her. Readers will wonder what her classmates would think about the accuracy of the nickname they've given her, i.e., Miss Match, if they knew the discrepancy between what she promises and what she actually does.

Susan Hughes has dazzled this reader with the breadth of her writing. I have reviewed her picture books (e.g., What Happens Next), her middle-grade novels (e.g., Four Seasons of Patrick), her YA (e.g., Virginia), and her non-fiction (e.g., Off to Class: Incredible and Unusual Schools Around the World). Each time, Susan Hughes writes with sensitivity and understanding. In Miss Match, she reminds us that everyone comes up with ideas some time, and some of them will be fantastic and some will be ludicrous. How we deal with our successes or our failures will speak more to our natures and strengths than the accolades or the judgements. Susan Hughes knows this and ensures that Polly comes across as a real person, who actually has a great idea but can't always deliver on it because she is shy, she is nervous about being judged, and she is young. Fortunately, she hangs around with a great bunch of people whose understanding of what it's like to be 13 is evident. They don't just forgive, they empathize.

 

While Miss Match is part of the Orca Currents series of high-interest novels for middle-grade students reading below grade level (reading level here is 2.8), Susan Hughes does not take short-cuts by giving readers a simple plot with little substance. She packs in issues of dishonesty, first crushes, inclusion–her friends are diverse in their abilities and disabilities, in their nationalities, and even in their gender-loving nature—and more. She tells the story with sensitivity and understanding but gives readers an ending that is satisfying without being contrived. Perhaps after celebrating a few more birthdays and with a little more experience, Miss Match could see herself in business again, providing a valuable service and growing her entrepreneur skills, one match at a time.

Saving Grad

Written by Karen Spafford-Fitz

James Lorimer & Co., Ltd.

978-1-4594-1252-1

160 pp.

Ages 13+

RL 5.0

August 2017

Mandy is right about one thing.  I have no idea how to be fun.  I had it beat out of me a long time ago. (pg. 97)

It's been beat out of her by her alcoholic, cocaine-abusing step-dad, Duncan, who has made her life and that of her mother Sophie a misery for two years.  Her mother is reluctant to leave, accustomed to the fine home and life style of wealth, but Vienna sees beyond the facade of a good life, apprehensive what could eventually happen if they stay.  When Duncan has a fall that lands him in hospital, Vienna is determined to pack themselves up and flee.  They head to Edmonton where, with the help of an outreach worker, they get a basement apartment and begin to make a new life, slowly.

Though initially happy to drown her sorrows, Sophie gets a job at a Starbucks and insists that Vienna get registered for her final year of high school.  To make it more difficult for Duncan to find them, Vienna decides to go by Vienna Fleury, using the last name of her Métis grandmother, Mémère.  Sophie and her mother may not have spoken for years–since they'd argued about her marriage to Duncan–but Vienna misses Mémère and calls her occasionally to keep her from worrying, though she never reveals where they are.

At her new high school, Vienna tries to stay under the radar but a friendly classmate named Mandy draws her into the school's social scene, enlisting Vienna's help on the grad party committee. Although Vienna begins to enjoy school and her mother is establishing a support system and relishing her independence, regardless of how financially strapped they are, you know things have to go awry.  Saving grad may be the least of Vienna's worries.

As part of Lorimer's SideStreets series of hi-lo (high interest-low vocabulary) books, Saving Grad is a fast read in plotting and word count.  But don't mistake a hi-lo read for a lesser story.  Author Karen Spafford-Fitz capably creates an intense plot of relationships between family and friends which can be positive and negative, supportive or destructive, and she makes sure to take us along on that bus ride.  Like Vienna and Sophie ending up in Edmonton in the middle of winter, the destination may not be an easy one at first but it is a fulfilling one in the end.  Saving Grad is bigger than the indisputable distress of physical abuse.  It's a story of resilience and strength and making something good out of something bad.  Karen Spafford-Fitz makes Saving Grad into saving Vienna and Sophie and others too.