Every Shiny Thing

Description: In this beautifully constructed middle grade novel, Lauren's autistic older brother has recently been sent to a therapeutic boarding school, and it seems to Lauren that her parents are unfairly 'living it up' now that he's gone. Lauren joins a simplicity group at her Quaker school and recruits Sierra, her new neighbor, for the group. She misunderstands the group's anti-materialism mission and slowly begins to take things from her parents and to shoplift, using the money she gets selling stolen goods to give to kids on the autism spectrum. Meanwhile, foster kid Sierra has been in a toxic relationship with both of her parents, as an enabler and caretaker. Sierra realizes she's falling into the same enabling patterns with Lauren. And Lauren must learn that what she is doing is not fighting injustice, however good her intentions. Told in alternating viewpoints between Sierra's verse chapters and Lauren's prose chapters, this is a story about fairness for young readers first grappling with an unequal world.
Author Biography: Cordelia Jensen is the author of the YA novel-in-verse Skyscraping, which earned a starred review from Booklist ('Exquisite free-verse poems...illuminating and deeply felt'). This is Laurie Morrison's first novel. Both authors live in Philadelphia and received MFAs in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.