Hey, look, it's the Girl of the Year 2017. Oh, poor Gabby. They did you wrong.
Gabby is a multitalented girl. She's a dancer in various styles as well as a poet. She struggles with a stutter, which is less focused on in this first book, though there are a few incidents with it.
The main plot of Gabby's book is her helping to raise funds to reopen her mother's community arts center, where all her non-school classes are. It's a good book with a lot of great moments and I love the cast. Shakespeare-loving Isaiah is my favorite.
The only flaw for me is the poetry. She's into poetry. There are a lot of poems in the text. I get it. I'm just not into poetry at all, so they bore me.
This was easily the best of the three books for me. Gabby learns her best friend Teagan is going to a special STEM school instead of the same one as Gabby, so she feels like she'll be alone against her nemesis Aaliyah. On the first day, Gabby and Isaiah, along with all the other sixth graders, are pelted with water balloons and they learn that sixth grade initiation is a thing. That sparks Gabby to run for sixth grade ambassador, so she can work to unify the school and end initiation. The annoying thing about this book is that the initiation itself should have been stopped by adults. Pelting younger kids with water balloons and leaving them post-its with mean nicknames that can last forever is flat-out bullying. It shouldn't take a student's efforts to stop this. The book has a nice resolution and Aaliyah actually is an interesting character once you get past her "you hurt my feelings so I bullied you to hurt you, too" mistake.
The third Gabby book is written by a different author, though you'd never know it. This one has Gabby taking on too much. Her ballet class is preparing to go en pointe, she's working on a solo and a duet piece for a poetry slam, and she's got to make not one but two Halloween costumes while also working on the class Halloween festival. She goes back and forth while considering a very large decision and also dealing with Teagan, who's now jealous of Aaliyah.
Gabby's books are pretty good, though as I mentioned, the poetry element never captures my attention. Like at all. I like everyone as a character for the most part. Gabby's books make me wish they'd occasionally do an additional book for the friend character. I'd like to get into Aaliyah's head in her own story.
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