Ah, Kavi, the American Girl who shares my birthday. The book opens on Kavi's 12th birthday and her Didima (father's mother) has given her four tickets to see Wicked on Broadway. (They live in NJ, so it's a train ride away.) Kavi is already interested in music and dance, so when she sees the show, she's even more enamored with the theater.
Kavi only has this one book, but it's essentially split into two stories. The first has Kavi struggling with school. She gets distracted easily and with her mother starting a new full-time job, Kavi is more on her own when it comes to organizing her life. After a couple bad incidents come up at a parent-teacher conference, Kavi realizes she needs to ask for help more often. With that improving, she's able to focus more on the student revue, which she's dancing in alongside her best friends, Pari and Sophie. After she falls during the first rehearsal and wants to quit, they have the inevitable friend fight, which is very, very mellow in terms of AG friend fights. Kavi realizes she still wants to do the show and things end up just fine.
In the second story, it's spring semester and there's a musical to get excited for. Kavi has a good audition, but can't beat talented Alaina, an eighth grader who's very good at singing, emoting, projecting her voice, etc. After initial disappointment, Kavi and Alaina get to be friends. Kavi and her friends also help Didima with her brand new cookie business. The drama of the story comes when a tree branch falls on the roof of their auditorium after a blizzard. The theater kids work together to raise money to rent the local community college's theater. They don't make enough, but after Kavi and some of the others go to the people at the college, they're given more time to raise the rest of the money and they're able to perform Annie in the theater.
I liked Kavi and her family a lot. It was great to see Kavi going with her dad to yoga because it helps her focus. I always like it when the dad is more of a character. So frequently, he's the less there one. This time, both parents and Didima are quite present. Rishi, the younger brother who wants to be a doctor, is both appropriately annoying and amusing.
Friend-wise though, the books failed. I enjoyed the nods to Indian culture from Kavi's family and Pari's, but Sophie is only mentioned as "not Indian," we never see her family, and she feels like a shadow of a character because she's the least developed. Even personality-wise, Pari is far more developed. Sophie's just kind of there. We know she likes hip hop dance, painting sets, and she can't sing. That's basically it. For as much as the friends were there, Sophie needed to be developed more.
For the musical drama, my first thought was to hold it at the local high school. I read pretty fast so I may have missed it, but I feel like that idea should at least have been thrown out there before jumping right to "Hey, let's have it at the community college where it'll cost us five grand."
And finally, my biggest issue with the book. Kavi's learning disability is never clarified. She's never diagnosed with anything. Her father had something similar, as does another boy in her class. But no one does any sort of official anything for Kavi. Kavi's parents would be younger than I am. I grew up when ADHD was just starting to be noticed more often, so her parents definitely know it's a thing. The fact that they do nothing for her beyond make her more organized schedules and have her get help from the guidance counselor kinda blows my mind. I thought this was going to be the ADHD rep GotY, but they don't even say ADHD in the text once. There's nothing in the back of the book about what you can do if you're struggling at school like Kavi. That deserved a few pages. Come on. This was very disappointing because AG needs to commit to saying she has ADHD. Give the kids some clear rep, not just dancing around the subject.
Overall, I enjoyed Kavi as a character and the book was fun, but the ADHD failure was a pretty large one, in my opinion.
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