The Whole Story of Half a Girl

Locations
Call Number: Y Fiction / Hiranandani, Veera
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown Kids Books 4-week checkout	Y Fiction / Hiranandani, Veera	4-week checkout	On Shelf

When Sonia's father loses his job and she must move from her small, supportive private school to a public middle school, the half-Jewish half-Indian sixth-grader experiences culture shock as she tries to navigate the school's unfamiliar social scene, and after her father is diagnosed with clinical depression, she finds herself becoming even more confused about herself and her family.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

I Should Have Liked This More... submitted by sdunav on June 19, 2012, 12:17pm ...but somehow I didn't. It's hard to put my finger on what exactly didn't work for me.

It *is* a pretty good middle-grade book (protagonist is a 6th grader) about a girl struggling with her identity when she has to switch from a fancy alternative hippy-type school to a huge public middle school after her father loses his job.

To make matters more difficult, she has an east Indian father and a Jewish mother and she doesn't know where to sit in the self-segregating cafeteria (her former school was small and they all had to eat together). She also runs into rampant consumerism, differing parenting styles, etc. - but some of the story seemed rather forced and heavy-handed. Plus I wanted more drama.

I gave it 3 stars on goodreads but wish I could have given it 3.5. It does address race and cultural background pretty well for kids in 4-7th grade. There is some mild sex - kissing - kids play "spin the bottle" and "two minutes in a closet" at a party.

Nice debut novel submitted by rshah on June 25, 2023, 7:54am Hiranandani does an excellent job showing how one key change in our lives can lead to so much upheaval and how you’re never too young to ask the big questions. I also appreciated that she brought in mental health and depression. It is not until later in the book that you realize how much of the plot is tinged by Sonia’s father’s depression, but this “tinging” felt very true to life. I was also surprised by the role shoes played in this book. They only come up a few times, but they were such an interesting object to use to highlight Sonia’s struggle to define herself.