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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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JENNIFER CHAN IS NOT ALONE

Tae Keller

Middle school can make you feel like you're totally alone in the universe... But what if we aren't alone at all?
Mallory Moss knows what it feels like to be alone. She's always felt different, and she never really had a best friend. Until she met Reagan. Reagan makes Mallory feel like she belongs. That is... until Jennifer Chan moves into the house across the street.

Jennifer is different. Jennifer doesn't seem to care about the rules of middle school, or about fitting in. Jennifer is willing to embrace the strange, the unknown... the extraterrestrial. She believes in aliens! And what's more, she thinks she can find them.

Then Jennifer goes missing. The adults say she's run away before... but what if it's something else? Using clues in Jennifer's journals about alien encounters, Mallory is determined to find her. But the closer she gets, the more Mallory has to confront why Jennifer might have run... and find the truth within herself.

In her first novel since winning the Newbery medal for When You Trap a Tiger, Tae Keller lights up the sky with this insightful story about shifting friendships, identity, and the power we all hold to influence and change one another. No one is alone.

Tae Keller is the Newbery award winning and New York Times bestselling author of When You Trap a Tiger and The Science of Breakable Things. She grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she subsisted on kimchi, purple rice, and stories. Now, she writes about biracial girls trying to find their voices, and lives in Seattle with her husband and a multitude of books.
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Published 2022-04-26 by Random House Children's Books

Comments

Keller uses a vulnerable first-person narrative that alternates between past and present to sensitively detail the emotional roller coaster of navigating changing social rules, the anxieties of being oneself, and the process of coming to terms with one's flaws.

I absolutely loved this book! It's not just Tae's glorious writing that had me hooked from the start, but her characters, so wonderfully imperfect and nuanced, that felt instantly relatable. In the end, Tae had me wondering which is more mysterious: the existence of extraterrestrials, or the beautiful, occasionally-heartbreaking intricacies of friendship.

By setting the victim, the missing Jennifer, into the narrative background, Keller directs the flood light onto Mallory and company and aims responsibility (and possible redemption) right where it belongs.

The emotionally absorbing story is full of thought-provoking explorations on self-confidence, forgiveness, and friendship while illuminating parallels between alien and human struggles.

With an appeal to a wide variety of readers, this genre fusion is highly recommended for all library shelves.

A mesmerizing look at bullying and its aftereffects.

Keller ... writes with uncommon compassion for all of her characters - even the cruel-seeming ones - addressing such issues as peer pressure, individuality, identity, and microaggressions from a variety of perspectives.