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Reviewed by: Emily McFarlane, Elementary School Librarian Title: Break Author: Kayla Miller
Series: Click #6
Publisher: Clarion Books
Year: 2024 Good for Grades: 3-6 Genre/Type of Book: Realistic Fiction Graphic Novel
Content Warnings, or things that other School Librarians should be aware of: Divorce, Social Media Addiction
Recommended for a school library: Yes Reason(s) for choosing the book: The next book in a series that is popular with my students and myself!
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Review:
Olive and company are back in this sixth installment in the Click series!
It is Spring Break, and Olive is bummed that she isn't going to be able to spend the break with her friends. They all have amazing plans- cheer camp, horror movie marathons, backyard campouts, a luxury girls trip with mom, and more. Olive, though? Olive is spending the week with her dad. The dad who left after the divorce and moved to New Zealand when she was younger. Olive hasn't quite gotten over it, and now the whole week is starting to feel like "the dad and Goober show." Will her break be saved, or will Olive find that some things are too broken to be repaired?
This series is a great middle school slice-of-life story and Break is another great installment. Olive is dealing with some serious feelings over her dad's reappearance in her life, which is very relatable to kids of divorced parents. Her father moved to another country after her parents split up, and didn't really keep in touch. Now, he's moved back into the city and wants to spend more time together. Olive spends a lot of the book putting up walls and not admitting that she missed her dad and felt hurt by his leaving. When she has a heart-to-heart with Nat, who she hasn't generally gotten along with, it gives her a new perspective and she takes the chance to talk it out with her dad. I was really impressed to see Olive's dad own up to how he acted before, saying "I was the adult, and I'm your dad. I should have tried harder." Kids really need to see/hear adults hold themselves accountable! It's just good modeling.
There was a through-line about screen addiction that developed as a result of Olive missing her friends that I felt could have been more fleshed-out or relegated to an entire book on its own. It felt somewhat squished in and wasn't a driving part of the plot. There were offhand comments ("by the time you choose the perfect warming filter, your food will be cold,") and some notes from friends that Olive would rather hang out with her phone than friends, but it didn't get any deeper than that or show any effects/consequences of screen addiction. At the end of the book, there was a little guide on how to handle/avoid screen addiction, but I felt that a more focused approach overall would have made it somewhat more meaningful. There was some great modeling of friendship/understanding between two characters who previously haven't been getting along, and it was nice to see them find some common ground.
This is another great SEL opportunity for lots of reasons- divorce, how to handle time away from your friends, how to handle getting a new/first phone and manage screen time, feeling like the third wheel, expressing feelings to family, etc. and could be the basis for many discussions around these topics or to give a kid struggling with these issues. As always, graphic novel fans and fans of the series will be eagerly awaiting this one!
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Find more resources for Break at TeachingBooks.net
Find this title in the Monroe 2 BOCES Sora Collection (other books in the series also available):
For more information about this book, see the Author's Website