Thirteen-year-old Ellen Katz is hoping her school trip to Barcelona will help her reconnect with her best friend Laurel. Laurel’s circle of friends has been widening, but for Ellen, who is autistic, the change in their routines is hard to manage. Ellen likes to have her life well planned out, assisted by her trusty journal.
The trip doesn’t turn out to be quite what Ellen imagined, however, as she ends up working on the class scavenger hunt in Barcelona with a group of students that doesn’t include Laurel, but does include a new student, Isa, who is nonbinary. Ellen sometimes struggles with sensory overload and social anxiety as plans and friendships shift, even though her classmates know she is neurodivergent and are (mostly) understanding. She gradually comes to realize that sometimes changes aren’t bad, especially with the help of friends who really care. The relationship between her and Isa is particularly lovely, as Ellen struggles at first to fit Isa into the structured categories through which she sees the world, but then comes to reconsider even her own gender identity. Ellen has also long known she was attracted to girls, and becomes more open about this over the course of the trip. Ellen and her family are White, as is Laurel; Isa is Latinx.
Author A. J. Sass, who is also autistic, gives Ellen a distinct and likeable personality, conveyed through the first-person narrative. Through Ellen’s eyes, readers see what her experience of being autistic is like, but this is never reduced to clichés; instead, we see her moving authentically through the world, knowing what she needs to take care of herself (with help from her family and a therapist), and growing in both personal knowledge and in her friendships.
Ellen is also a rare Jewish character whose Jewishness is neither a one-time reference to Hanukkah nor (at the other extreme) a strict Orthodox life. Her mother is a cantor (a Jewish clergyperson who leads prayers and songs), and the family keeps Kosher (mostly) and lights candles on Shabbat every Friday. Her father, who is a chaperone on the trip, was born in Israel, and speaks in Hebrew as well as English with Ellen. Ellen’s Jewishness is an integrated part of her identity, neither an afterthought nor her primary motivator (which is refreshing for this Jewish reviewer).
Sass thoughtfully depicts Ellen’s intersectional and evolving identities against the background of a fun and unfamiliar (for most U.S. readers) locale, with a puzzling scavenger hunt, engaging secondary characters (one of whom comes out as gay), and a gentle dose of humor. It is a story of journeys both real and metaphorical, and readers will be glad to be along for the ride. Expect awards for this one, and well deserved.
