Merci Suárez Changes Gears, by Meg Medina

            This book follows a young girl named Merci Suárez as she begins sixth grade. Merci lives in Florida with her father, mother, brother, grandparents, aunt, cousins, and her cat, Tuerto. She is not the most popular girl in school like her classmate Edna, and she wishes that she could fit in with the rest of the sixth-grade girls. However, she feels self-conscious about her appearance and about her family not being as wealthy as everyone else at her private school. Throughout the book, Merci’s strong, determined personality leads her into trouble like when she injures a classmate after trying to prove to him that she can hit any type of pitch he throws. In addition to the stress at school, Merci experiences stress at home from her family. She is upset at having to babysit her cousins instead of having fun with her friends. Additionally, she wishes that her family would not treat her like a child. She also notices that her grandfather, Lolo, acts differently than before. Normally, Lolo is the one person in the world who seems to truly understand Merci, but he starts forgetting people and events, has a bad fall even though he has ridden a bike all his life, and he wanders away when he should know to stay. Merci does not know at first what is happening to him, and she misses the way he used to be. However, Merci discovers that her whole family, Lolo included, knew that he has Alzheimer’s disease and decided not to tell her. This temporarily breaks Merci’s trust in her family and her heart. After Lolo has an angry outburst at Abuela, Merci begins to feel embarrassed at what her friends may think of him when they come over to her house. However, Merci soon realizes that her friends love spending time with her and her family. She realizes that all her friends think their own family is odd in some way. At the end of the book, Merci experiences change as Edna no longer is the most liked girl at school, her brother is going away to college the next year, and Lolo’s condition continues to worsen. Merci decides to embrace both positive and negative change because she is capable of adapting to any new situation. This book won the Newberry Medal, and Meg Medina has won the Pura Belpré Award.

            This book is most appropriate for fifth and sixth graders. It would be a fantastic book for the whole class to read and to have in my classroom library for students to read freely. Because this book deals with a variety of difficult yet common topics for students this age, it would be a great way to start conversation in the classroom. For example, students could discuss the pressures of fitting in socially, the importance of family and friends, and the difficulty of change. Additionally, students could present projects that deeply analyze these topics and allow students to connect their experiences with Merci’s. They could create dioramas or other artistic representations of their favorite parts of the book. Then, they could present to the class why they chose that scene and why it stood out to them. I would love for students to analyze and discuss Merci’s conclusion about change. She concludes that since change brings good along with sadness, she should welcome it. This conclusion would also be a great writing prompt for students to agree or disagree with Merci and then add their own thoughts about the nature of change. This topic is incredibly relevant for students at this age because sixth grade is a time of change and transition out of childhood. Students could also write about ways they relate and do not relate with Merci and her experiences. This gives students the opportunity to discuss what they read in a more private way and allows them to discover more about themselves by using this book to spark introspection. This book invites readers to think about their personal connections to the text because it is realistic fiction and Merci is about the same age as the sixth-grade students reading the book.