Review: The Cure for Cold Feet

Thank you Check-it-Out, for hosting Poetry Friday this week.

I've  read The Cure for Cold Feet (Random House May 8, 2018) by Beth Ain. 

At first blush, this MG novel-in-verse packs a punch of truth and insight into what it feels like to be a new sixth grader in middle school. I mean, who doesn't closely read the bathroom walls and go through friendship earthquakes, tornados, tsunamis, and cyclones?

Izzy Kline has all of that plus extra family relationships to juggle in her life...as soon as she organizes things with her mother, brother, and father.

Cure's subtitle, a novel in small moments, gives us a hint about the real vibe of the story. In so many small but essential moments, Izzy works out who she is as a daughter, sister, friend, step-daughter and sixth grader. She faces tough choices in allowing herself to be defined by the lives of her family and friends or by her own ideas of who she is.....all in between dashes of sixth-grade life.

Her story makes me realize just how much so many of my students are actually working through -- talk about homework!

The Cure for Cold Feet is a book I'm happy to have in my middle school library. This is a book that reaches out to kids that might think that they are alone in figuring things out...who need a laugh....who need to know that the small moments good and bad pass but are like pages of the chapters of our life stories.

The real power of Cure for Cold Feet is Izzy's ability to navigate her world and speak up for what she believes is right. I was cheering for her all along the way.

What I like about this book is that it is a novel-in-verse....however, as blank verse, I didn't even notice. I was drawn into Izzy's story. The format of text didn't matter to me at all. However, it might really help a student that gets tired or stressed out from traditionally dense paragraphs and pages.