Loved these characters, and the story was great too. This would appeal to kids who like friendship stories, adventure, bullying stories, or mystery. There is a little something for everyone. It's also a great story about a character with a family member in the military. This could be a good read-a-like for many titles - some that come to mind are Fuzzy Mud, anything by Erin Entrada Kelly, or When You Reach Me. ( )

It took me a while to pick this one up, and then I thought it was just a solid book -- and then I found that I wanted to know what happened and that I needed to stay up late to finish it -- and then I realized that it was an amazing book.

Jesse has a great voice and Springer is a fantastic friend, and it's really something special to read about their adventures. Loved: neurodivergent main character, really spectacular allyship on both sides of a friendship, parent serving overseas, a solid mystery, an impatient but super loving and supportive family, and a community coming together in the wake of a tornado. I also really appreciate how this story deals with bullying -- there's a lot of it, it escalates. Jesse fights back, and asks for help, and the adults are responsive (to a point) and it still doesn't stop. And she is a violent element in her own defense and is not strongly censured for that -- which is astonishing and refreshing, and not how these stories are usually told. Her parents are great advocates, and it does get resolved in the end, but there's just this level of pervasive realism with regards to the bullying (it's worse than people know) and also these great moments of unexpected assistance, and mostly its just such a relief to see her be believed.

I also really loved seeing the author's note in the end, talking about her own experiences and what she brought to this book. ( )

diverse children's middlegrade fiction (middle-school girl with autism deals with bullies, solves a mystery, and helps people post-tornado with the help of her Pomeranian Sam-Sam and her new friend Springer in Kentucky; #ownvoices author has autism and also is a trained neuropsychologist).

The prologue was confusing, but as the two threads of the story became clearer (before the "apocalypse" and during/after) it was pretty exciting and very readable. ( )