Kelly Yang

This novel is a message to middle school students and parents in regards to the dangers of screen time. This novel follows the book Finally Seen.

Lina spends the entire novel wondering who she is, as she stumbles into puberty. She and Carla become the only holdouts who do not have a phone--mainly because their families can't afford phones for them. They feel left out, not a part of the masses who live on their phones. The school day depicts students constantly on their phones in front of the teachers with teachers ineffectually telling them to put them away. No one is learning--they are completely obsessed with their phones. At home, Lina sees her parents working really hard but earning little money. An idea is presented that her mom's bath bomb business would get more customers if there was an online presence. After her mother makes a video that people love and kicks the bath bomb sales into high tear, Lina, Carla, and Finn decide to help. They brainstorm ideas and begin making videos, which turn out to be successful.

With success comes envy, insecurity, and lies. Lina's mom purchases a used phone and gives Lina a phone so that she can more easily make the necessary videos. In addition to making videos, Lina gets sucked into the algorithms used to trap users. One of their teachers notices how much the students are addicted and teaches lessons on why they're addicted, explaining the way social media uses tactics to manipulate the users. Lina finds that she can only find who she truly is by reading the comments others make about her and making decisions about her looks based on those comments. It's not a healthy relationship--Lina and her social media. She becomes insecure and lies to her mother as to how much she takes the comments and what people say about her at school online to heart.

Lina still struggles with her classmates, deepening her insecurities. She sees the richer lives they live and the mean comments that are left. There's examples of bullying that Lina finds disturbing, but she ends up getting sucked into the "anonymity" of social media like everyone else. Her grandmother gives her wise advice that will eventually help Lina. Lina also works to keep her sister more innocent. In the end, Lina opens her eyes and realizes that she needs to tell someone about her insecurities concerning puberty and friendships and dating and social media. She's overwhelmed and not handling anything on her own very well.

The novel has a great message and shows the. dangers of social media well. She's spot on with students--and parents--as they depend on their phones for everything, including basing your identity off stranger's comments. The story with Carla is particularly important, showing how easily people can be mislead online. At times, I feel the novel is a bit didactic, but the realism alleviates some of this preachiness. Parents need to read this novel with their kids and then look in the mirror and see how much they, themselves, are the problem as well.… (meer)

middlegrade fiction, follow-up to Finally Seen - while Lina struggles with the awkwardness of body changes as a 6th/7th grader, she and her sister help her mom with social media to increase sales of her bath bombs, but soon get trapped in the deleterious cycles of the various platforms (plus dealing with trolls/bullies). Takes place in modern day southern California.

Inspired by the author's daughter's very real struggles with similar issues, Kelly Yang tackles some tough topics and hopefully this book will help lots of kids. It's somewhat less interesting to readers who are already annoyed enough by social media (too many ads, if you ask me!), but I liked when the teacher goes over the science (dopamine, addiction, predatory algorithms, trusting people who haven't earned it, etc) in the second half, and I love this author and all that she does in her writing.… (meer)

In this beautiful, lyrical book, author Kelly Yang pays homage to numerous Asian-American people -- both historical and contemporary -- who have contributed to our society. In some cases, that is activism against injustices; in other cases, that means impressive feats in sports; and in still other cases, that is cultural contributions in the form of literature, music, fashion, and more.

Each page spread had a limited amount of text and lovely illustrations of one or more important Asian-American figures. The illustrations are the works of numerous Asian-American artists, so there are definitely different styles at play but somehow it all seems cohesively put together.

Backmatter provides more details in a paragraph-long biography for each person, which are fairly comprehensive but also make for a good jumping off point for curious readers to discover subjects and then go off to other biographical and/or historical sources for further information.… (meer)