#MMGM: Spin With Me, By Ami Polonsky

I'm posting today with the fantastic Marvelous Middle Grade Mondays blog hop hosted by Greg Pattridge of Always in the Middle. Check out Greg's blog for a list of additional middle grade reviews. 

Since this is Pride month, I'm focusing my MMGM book reviews on middle-grade books about sexual orientation and gender identity. 

A note for those wondering if books like this are appropriate for middle-grade kids: 9-13 is exactly the age when kids are entering puberty and starting to think about love, sex, and increasingly, gender identity. That makes it exactly the age when they need books that openly address the things that happen in middle school besides using a locker and changing classrooms six times a day. If 10-year-olds are old enough to be thinking about kissing their girl/boy friends (and they are thinking about it, so... yeah), then they are old enough to read about it. 

 This week's book tells a story of first love from two perspectives.

 

Title: Spin With Me

Author: Ami Polonsky

Publishing Info:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. 224 pages.

Source: Library

Publisher's Blurb (via Goodreads):
In this elegant dual narrative, Essie is a thirteen-year-old girl feeling glum about starting a new school after her professor dad takes a temporary teaching position in a different town. She has 110 days here and can't wait for them to end. Then she meets Ollie, who is nonbinary. Ollie has beautiful blue eyes and a confident smile. Soon, Essie isn’t counting down the days until she can leave so much as she’s dreading when her time with Ollie will come to an end.

Meanwhile, Ollie is experiencing a crush of their own . . . on Essie. As Ollie struggles to balance their passion for queer advocacy with their other interests, they slowly find themselves falling for a girl whose stay is about to come to an end. Can the two unwind their merry-go-round of feelings before it's too late?

My Review:
Spin with Me is an engaging read, and I was particularly intrigued by the way the author chose to tell the story from the points of view of both Essie and Ollie--not by alternating chapters, but by in essence starting over halfway through and telling it again.

The first half of the book is Essie's story--her unhappiness about moving, the upsetting collapse of her parents' marriage, and her scary new feelings for Ollie. This half is a bit more detailed than the second half, since some story elements are already known (as a writer, I'm impressed with the balancing act Polonsky pulls off here, making Ollie's story coherent without repeating too much). Essie is happy to be part of Ollie's GLOW club, the Gender and Love Open-minded Warriors group whose goal is to "erase all the hate in the world." Big ambitions, and that seems to summarize Ollie.

Essie isn't totally unfamiliar with non-binary genders, but has a lot to learn, which makes it easy for the author to help the reader learn without being preachy. Her story is good, if maybe too focused on the whole romance thing. Though I suspect that when 7th-graders fall in love, that does become the focus of most of their thoughts (as I guess it does for most of us at any age?).

Ollie's story is where it gets really interesting, in my opinion, and I was sorry it was the shorter half (but I can also see why, plot-wise, it needed to come second). Because Ollie has been out for 3 years, they aren't struggling with questions of coming out, or what it means to be non-binary. What Ollie has to learn is how to balance being an anti-hate warrior and an advocate for LGBTQAI+ rights without forgetting that they are a person apart from their gender. 

It's interesting to see how Ollie's super-supportive mom may actually have made this harder for them, since she's been so determined Ollie won't have the struggles that their next door neighbor, a non-binary adult, had growing up before they had the vocabulary for it. She really pushes the bold warrior aspect.

Ollie and Essie are head-over-heels for each other, and it's interesting to watch them both learn how to communicate, and how to be themselves, both with each other and in the wider world.

My Recommendation:
Another for the 10-14 crowd. The story models a lot of good things: open communication (though it takes Essie and Ollie a while to get there), kindness (a group of friends who make room for Essie right off, even though she's the new kid and only there for a semester), and parents who are sometimes trying too hard, but just want things to be good for their kids. 

 

 

FTC Disclosure: I checked Spin With Me out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  



Rebecca M. Douglass, 2025
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