My Especially Weird Week with Tess

April 3, 2023
On the first day of his family vacation on Texel Island, 11-year-old Sam meets 12-year-old local Tess, who becomes his intrepid and immediate confidante. Tess is privately grappling with her own stressors; her single mother has shared very little about Tess’s father over the years, so Tess takes matters into her own hands by not only finding out who her dad is, but successfully luring him and his girlfriend to the island by pretending they won a free week at Tess’s mom’s vacation cottage. Keeping her true identity secret, Tess poses as an unrelated, curious tween and slowly connects with her dad. Sam, meanwhile, wrestles with an increasingly prevalent fear of a loved one’s death and attempts to prepare himself for the eventuality by spending less time with family. Tess’s conflicted feelings about her father and Sam’s preoccupation with death’s realities are deftly handled, and Sam’s relationships with his family, particularly his brother, are realistically flawed and filled with love. Brisk pacing and a fully realized setting by Woltz (Talking to Alaska) paired with animated illustrations by Dean round out this fervent story of friendship and family. Characters read as white. Ages 10–14.

Starred review from March 15, 2023
Grades 5-7 *Starred Review* Within an hour of meeting Tess, Sam learns to foxtrot and conducts a funeral for an elderly man's pet canary. It's not what he expected from a family vacation on Texel Island, but he quickly learns that 12-year-old Tess is full of surprising revelations and plans. For example, her mother has never informed her father that he has a daughter, but Tess wonders about him. She has lured him to the island for a week at their vacation house so that she can meet him and decide whether to reveal her identity. At first, all goes well, but a chance remark wounds Tess, who resolves to keep her mother's secret. Now Sam must decide whether he will do the same. A year younger than Tess and gobsmacked by her energy and ingenuity, Sam narrates the story with a winning combination of joy, bemusement, and reflection that extends to his own family and the human condition as well as his new friend's predicament. From one day's eclectic activities to the next, the story's pace never falters, while Sam's observations and earnest, occasionally clueless responses to new situations add to the narrative's charm. First published in the Netherlands in 2013, this novel is fresh, amusing, and rewarding.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.