I Speak Boy by Jessica Brody (2021) is a solid read for middle grades readers, especially if they are interested in a little romance. With a fun premise and modern lessons, there are plenty of twists and turns and memorable characters in this loose retelling if Jane Austen’s Emma.

Emmy is obsessed—and not in a good way—with her smartphone and all the apps she keeps neatly organized and within reach. During a disastrous set-up that Emmy orchestrates for her bestie and a boy at her middle school carnival, Emmy and her fancy, expensive phone end up in the “magical lagoon.” As her friendships and her attempts at love-matching fall apart, Emmy discovers a new app on her phone that translates boy-speak into plain English that she can understand. Obviously, this will help immensely with pairing off her classmates and restoring her most cherished friendship. But not everything is smooth sailing, even when you’re a girl who speaks boy.

I have been reading quite a bit of YA and middle grades literature, lately (again). I have been reading YA because I am writing YA. I have been reading middle grades partly because I have been taking classes from Jessica Brody on Writing Mastery Academy and she references some middle grades books, including her own. I mean, part of me felt taken in, buying her books after taking her classes. But she hadn’t told me to read them, hadn’t been pushy at all. She just referred to them as examples. And some of her books had the cutest set-ups. Some of her writing examples were impressive to me. She’s not super famous as a fiction author, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I ordered like four of her books and picked this one up first.

I was not super impressed with the beginning, which was pretty, um, common in writing, plot, and characters. (Part of the rocky start is the secret language that her brothers speak in, stumping everyone around them for months… um, I figured it out in about ten seconds. So that was weird.) But I decided to trust the journey, assuming at the least that I would see a story full of stakes and twists unfolding in a way that I could learn from. The story warms up. It keeps you guessing even though some of it is obvious. And in the end, the message is good. It is quite middle grades (why don’t we call it MG?). Okay, it’s very MG. It’s not the kind of book that most adults are going to enjoy reading, even though it is a retelling of Emma by Jane Austen (pretty darn loosely, but I did catch on at some point, without being told ahead of time). I am recommending it for middle grades kids because it’s a pretty good book as far as their likes and developmental stage are concerned. But even I enjoyed reading it, even so, because I am a curious person.

It’s on the lighter side of MG reading, but still has some moments of learning and introspection mixed in with the fun and the MG romance. I was concerned for some time that it was going to be too gendered, as in generalizing to an unhelpful point, but by the end that’s not at all where it lands. It’s a sweet book: she kinda loses her way but is surrounded by caring people… and of course finds her way back. Emmy has some modern lessons to learn and going along with her will be a fun read for many kids, especially ones who want a little innocent romance.

QUOTES:

“Because even though she claims she doesn’t know what she’d say if Mr. Weston asked her out, I do …. To anyone else, it would have been invisible …. But to me, it was as bright and glowing as a spotlight” (p251).

“Because that’s what I do. I smile when she frowns. I order food when she’s hungry. I clean up when she forgets to. I help the boys with their homework when she’s too busy” (p251).

“It just takes him a while to open up. It’s like he wants to make sure he can trust you before he lets you in. Knowing how middle school can go, I don’t think it’s a terrible strategy” (p354).