abbielester 's review for:

Breakout by Kate Messner

5.0

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Kate Messner's new novel is told using various formats to document the events of the story: letters for the time capsule, text messages, news reports, etc. This gives the story a sense of immediacy and keeps the pace moving. Elidee loves poetry, and many of her entries are in the form of poems inspires by the work of others like Jacqueline Woodson and Lin-Manuel Miranda. This is a great book for middle school because that is a time of questioning and becoming. Readers will begin to analyze their own racial biases and develop compassion for those who are different in some way. I like Elidee's sentiment at the end of the book that if you don't mean to welcome everyone, then you don't mean welcome at all. Highly recommended.

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