Clara Poole and the Wrong Way Up [Clara Poole]
by Taylor Tyng
Intermediate, Middle School    Pixel + Ink/Holiday    368 pp.
7/24    9781645951629    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781645951636    $11.99

After winning the hot-air balloon race in Clara Poole and the Long Way Round (rev. 9/23), Clara is deflated to find she must compete for a place at Air Academy, where so much seems set against her. She is called a fraud and nicknamed “aero-not”; mysterious illnesses, injuries, rigged races, pranks, accidents, and a scheming assistant headmaster named Cyprian Hunt undermine her. Greta Gildersleeve, her mentor in the first book, is missing, but beloved teacher Wenna Pickney encourages Clara: “If ever there was a man stuck in the past, it’s Cyprian Hunt. This would probably still be a boys’ school if he had his way…This, Clara, is your time to thrive.” She encourages Clara to challenge the rules: “Rewrite them if you must.” More than a tale about a balloon race, this becomes the story of a plucky girl challenging a patriarchal system to prove she is where she belongs; readers will cheer her on, knowing how much is at stake. Tyng ably keeps the tale airy and flying forward, like the balloons on which his young aeronauts ride. “Girls must always support girls, no matter what,” Wenna Pickney had advised Clara, and by story’s end Clara and new friend Ophelia soar off together into a new adventure.

From the ">September/October 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.