Lula Bell on Geekdom, Freakdom + the Challenges of Bad Hair (review)

With a musician father who’s constantly on the road and a mother who owns her own business, Lula Bell Bonner and her family depend on Grandma Bernice to keep things together at home—to be there when Lula Bell gets home from school and needs to talk, and to make her award-winning donuts to celebrate events big and small. Right now, things aren’t going so great for Lula Bell at school. She’s somehow made queen bee Kali Keele’s enemy’s list, and no matter what she does, she can’t break into the circle of reasonably popular fifth-grade girls. Alan is always happy to see her and save her a seat at lunch, but he is a geek with impossible hair, so this just makes things worse. Her social problems suddenly seem tiny by comparison, however, when her beloved grandmother passes away. Lula and her mother are undone by grief; the hole Grandma Bernice’s passing has left in their lives seems too big to fill. As Lula Bell works through her loss, she is emboldened to shift the balance of power between her and Kali, and she lashes out at Alan even though he doesn’t deserve it. Lula Bell’s voice is fresh and funny, full of quips and asides that add sparks of energy to her observations about the frustrations of busy parents, embarrassing elders, and social hierarchies. Her winning, upbeat narration secures empathy from the start, and when her grandmother dies readers will be invested in Lula Bell’s grief and recovery, which moves at a realistically patient pace. Lula Bell is flawed enough for most readers to really relate to, so they will forgive her outbursts of anger and aggression as she comes to realize what it means to have and to be a real friend.