Starred review from May 1, 2020
Gr 6-8-When eighth grader Molly Fisher becomes fed up with her school's unfair enforcement of the dress code policy, she starts a podcast in protest. Through interviews she conducts with her classmates, Molly educates her listeners (and readers) on how the dress code is enforced almost exclusively through young women, and disproportionately affects those who have developed sooner or more than their classmates. Outside of school, her family is in crisis after they discover that Molly's brother has been selling tobacco vape pods to younger kids on the bus. The issues are timely without seeming trendy, and Firestone's crackling writing makes every day in Molly's life interesting to read about-even one of the most boring events on Earth, a school board meeting. By painting such a full picture of Molly's life, Firestone shows how difficult it can be to simply exist in the world of middle school. VERDICT Hand this first purchase to blossoming activists of every cause; this is a deeply, often scathingly honest work of modern fiction. -Chance Lee Joyner, Haverhill Public Library, MA
Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from April 15, 2020
Grades 5-8 *Starred Review* Molly is an eighth grader at Fisher Middle School, where the patriarchal administration is hell-bent on enforcing a dress code that values compliance over comfort and dignity. Female students are regularly pulled over, harassed, and shamed by the callous Dr. Couchman and his henchwoman Fingertip?so named for her favorite rule: hemlines of shorts, skirts, and dresses will reach below the student's extended fingertips while standing. After witnessing a friend's humiliation at Couchman's hands, Molly decides enough is enough. She begins publishing everyone's horror stories through Dress Coded: A Podcast, and as the school year progresses, her peaceful protest grows into a movement. Finally, she and her classmates take their case to the board of education. Molly's first-person narration, delivered in brief sections?occasionally formatted as bullet points, letters, or transcripts?lends a powerful intimacy to the text. That's good, because this story feels personal, for both Molly and author Firestone. They?and countless others?are fed up, and that energy fuels the beautifully paced pages of this book, full of humor, rage, and heart. An uncommonly sprawling cast of students gives authenticity to Molly's middle-school experience, bolstered by subplots of friendship, crushes, and vaping, and a triumphant ending shows how systemic change can be made when girls stand together. Absolutely necessary for tweens and teens, especially non-males too busy to bother with toxic, patriarchal nonsense. Straight fire.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
Starred review from June 8, 2020
When Olivia Bonaventura, a girl in Molly Frost’s eighth grade class, is dress coded for wearing a tank top with spaghetti straps, it results in the class camping trip being canceled. Everyone blames Olivia, but she’d only removed her sweatshirt to cover a period blood stain on her white jeans. It’s the latest example of the school’s unfair rules, which target young women (“the girls with boobs and butts, the prettiest girls, and the girls with long legs”) and fail to account for socioeconomic and other circumstances that can make the code challenging to adhere to. Molly begins Dress Coded: a Podcast, where students share their experiences and together try to challenge the rules. As the students protest, Molly learns the power of her voice and finds the strength to handle hardships at home, namely her brother’s vaping addiction and dealing of vape pods to middle schoolers. With timely, important anecdotes that ring painfully true, Firestone (The Unlikelies) cuts to the heart of the damage that dress coding can inflict. Chapters alternate between podcasts and letters that Molly writes in this deeply satisfying, variously inclusive journey with a wonderfully flawed main character. Ages 10–up. Agent: Sara Crowe, Pippin Properties.
Starred review from April 15, 2020
A spirited eighth grader and her friends leverage the power of social networking to fight their school's oppressive dress code. Students are furious when the class campout is canceled because fellow student Olivia contravened the dress code. That changes after Molly persuades Olivia to tell the embarrassing story on her new podcast. Going public at first worsens her mortification; both girls are targeted by bullies. Then, as Molly's podcast followers mount, others post photos of dress-code shaming on Instagram, revealing the harm caused by policing girls' appearances while ignoring social, cultural, and economic realities that govern their lives and clothing choices. Talia's hair (she's Trinidadian) triggers the dress code. While Molly's pre-pubertal figure is ridiculed by an obnoxious classmate (Megan, with cerebral palsy, knows how that feels), her violations of the dress code are ignored, but girls with curvier bodies are repeatedly sanctioned. When district administrators ignore their petition to end dress coding, students strategize next steps. Molly, a refreshingly average student gifted with empathy, has a brother who deals vaping paraphernalia, stressing her white middle-class family financially and emotionally. Diverse secondary characters include several with disabilities. Beyond code inequities, everyday issues like family stress and active-shooter lockdowns complicate the lives of these appealing characters. Vividly conveyed, their almost-palpable adolescent angst is at once uniquely contemporary and timeless. Readers will root for them as they discover that taking action makes an effective antidote. Timely, engaging, and full of heart. (Fiction. 10-15)
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