Save me a Seat, written by Sarah Weeks & Gita Varadarajan, reviewed by Klaudia Janek

Summary: Fifth-grader Ravi is starting school at Albert Einstein Elementary School. He is coming from Bangalore and had to move because of his father’s new job. Ravi was a star student at home and he was also a great cricket player. However, when he arrives in New Jersey, the students at his new school can’t understand and everything from his pressed clothes to his lunches make him stand out. Joe is our other protagonist. He has Auditory Processing Disorder and has been the object of bullying for as long as he can remember. He goes with a teacher named Miss Frost for extra reading help and he looks forward to working with her. To make matters worse, Joe’s mom started working in the cafeteria because she needed a job that was flexible with school hours. Both Ravi and Joe feel like outsiders who question their place at school.

Straight Talk for Librarians: This is a really unique book with two authors alternating chapters with their stories. The book chapters are set up by the lunch schedule, so the story spans a week and the reader will know what is for lunch every day that week. I thought it was a really cool structural device for the story. I think this is a particularly poignant story in terms of finding ways to understand each other and becoming friends with people who might be a little different than you. It’s hard to be an outsider for a variety of reasons. It also gives the reader some insight into what it might feel like to be at a new school and experiencing a new culture. I would say there is also a message about trying to understand living with a learning disability as some readers may have never heard of APD. There is also the underlying message about the importance of pronouncing names correctly. It’s a big part of a student’s identity, so we should all try hard to pronounce names correctly. I think this story could be a great way to develop empathy and to walk in someone else’s shoes. For some readers, this book may introduce a lot of new foods and how lunch might differ between students in the US and in India. Many other books are available about school lunches around the world in non-fiction so this might serve as a good opportunity for fiction and non-fiction book pairings in the library. This book could also serve as inspiration to sit with someone new during lunch and get to know them a little bit. Both Ravi and Joe have a glossary at the end and readers will be delighted to find two recipes they could try that were mentioned in the book. I think this book would work well as a read-aloud so it could be a good choice for a One Book, One School read. All in all, this book is a great purchase for an elementary school library.