Invisible Emmie

The main narrative follows a day in the life of super-shy seventh grader Emmie, who rarely speaks to a soul at school; occasional sections follow "Katie," super-popular and impossibly perfect (she gets straight As, her parents have never embarrassed her, and everyone wants to be her BFF). Emmie loves to draw and fills her narration with amusingly labeled doodles, while Katie's story is told comic-style. When a classmate finds a note Emmie wrote about the boy she likes and shares it with everyone, Emmie goes from feeling completely invisible to feeling embarrassingly visible, with all her classmates staring and laughing at her. Both text and illustrations contain appropriately kidlike descriptions of her social anxiety (a "squeezy feeling in my stomach") along with humorous examples of the various horrors of middle school (an illustration shows a spotlight shining on Emmie as she changes clothes for gym class). The more visible (and satisfyingly confident and outspoken) Emmie becomes, the less visible Katie becomes, until she completely disappears--a no-longer-needed coping mechanism that existed only in Emmie's imagination and drawings. Libenson's clever tale will entertain readers in the throes of middle school as well as younger students both wary of and intrigued by their near future. jennifer m. brabander