Lo Simpson Starts a Revolution
by Melanie Florence
Middle School    Orca    216 pp.
4/24    Paper ed.  9781459838505    $14.95
e-book ed.  9781459838529    $11.99

Lo Simpson, twelve, is no Margaret Simon: she’d just as soon never get her period, and to her a bra is just “a medieval torture device.” But her best friend, Jazz, suddenly wants to go bra shopping and sneers at Lo’s Doctor Who cosplay. In fairly short order, Jazz is sitting at the “It Girls’ table,” leaving Lo bereft, pouring out her sadness and confusion in letters to the Doctor that she never sends. As sensitively as Florence depicts the dissolution of Lo and Jazz’s friendship, this is more than a middle-school friend-breakup story. Lo quickly (some would say conveniently) discovers a table of fellow nerds who get her Doctor Who references and give her a new community and new confidence. When, after an excruciating sex-ed session capped by a mass condom handout, some boys target the It Girls with condom-balloons, innuendo, and bra-snapping, Lo draws on lessons about consent from her lawyer mother and fights back—just the first skirmish in her “revolution.” The many references to Doctor Who risk confounding readers unfamiliar with the BBC classic, but Lo comes across as a genuine fan, and the Doctor is an important factor in her growth. Lo’s metamorphosis from “friendless loser” to a “new, badass version of herself” is swift but rewarding; readers get enough of Lo’s interiority to believe her journey. Breezy and bracing.

From the July/August 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.