Just Maria

Hardwig, Jay. 2022. Grades: 05, 06, 07.

Subjects: Blind - Fiction; Girls - Fiction; Schools - Fiction; Missing persons - Fiction

Abstract: Maria Romero is a blind sixth-grader who is trying her hardest to be normal. Not amazing. Not inspiring. Not helpless. Not weird. Just normal. Normal is hard enough with her white cane, glass eyes, and bumpy books, but Maria’s task is complicated by her neighbor and classmate JJ Munson, an asthmatic overweight oddball known in the halls of Marble City Middle as a double-dork paste-eater. When JJ draws Maria into his latest hare-brained scheme—a series of public challenges to prove their worth as gumshoes for his Twinnoggin Detective Agency—she fears she’s lost her last chance to go unnoticed. When a young girl goes missing on the streets of Marble City, Maria’s new-found confidence is tested in ways she never anticipated.