Welcome Back, Maple Mehta-Cohen

“Adventure abounds and develops into a solid story for students who struggle with reading. . . . This is a story to share with all.” —School Library Connection (starred review)

Maple Mehta-Cohen has a secret: she can’t read very well. She has an impressive vocabulary and loves dictating stories into her recorder—especially the adventures of a daring sleuth who’s half Indian and half Jewish like Maple herself—but words on the page just don’t seem to make sense to her. Despite all Maple’s clever tricks, her teacher is on to her, and now Maple has to repeat fifth grade. Maple is devastated—what will her friends think? So she uses her storytelling skills to convince her classmates that she’s staying back as a special teacher’s assistant. But as Maple navigates the loss of old friendships, the possibility of new ones, and her reading challenges head-on, her deception becomes harder to keep up. Can Maple begin to recognize her own strengths and love herself—and her brain—just the way she is? In a paperback edition with an eye-catching cover and a dyslexia-friendly font, this heartwarming story and its bright, creative heroine will have special appeal to readers who have faced their own trials with school and friendships.

Kate McGovern is the author of the young adult novels Rules for 50/50 Chances and Fear of Missing Out, which received starred reviews. She has worked in schools and education nonprofits in Boston, London, and New York City, including at the Harlem Children's Zone, where she served as a reading specialist and directed Shakespeare productions with middle-schoolers. Her daughter, Priya, is the original "Hin-Jew" kid that Maple is written for. Kate McGovern lives in an Indian-Jewish household in Cambridge, Massachusetts.