This Cookie Will Change Your Life

Gr 4-7–It’s summer and Tilly, Eloise, Mateo, Jada, and Herschel have all just completed sixth grade. Despite knowing one another from school, their friendships are either strained or nonexistent. Each navigating home situations in their own way, they all have one thing in common: the need for a diversion. That diversion comes in the form of the Freedom Farmer’s Market taking place in early July. Having stumbled upon each other at the public library, the kids haphazardly develop a plan to sell cookies there, enough to get them all to California where there’s a beach and sand and bonfires. This pipe dream is what brings each character’s story together. Realistically told in third-person point-of-view, chapters alternate among the five characters, with some taking a deeper dive into the family dynamics than others. Readers are presented with some difficult family and friends situations, such as death and grief, neglect, poverty, loneliness, and bullying. Ellis often uses humor to lighten the mood that comes across as real and enviable in the way of friendships. Hand to fans of Wendy Mass’s The Candy Makers or Rob Buyea’s Because of Mr. Terupt.