Finding Normal by Stephanie Faris

In Finding Normal, a 12-year-old girl must learn to make a new life when her home is made uninhabitable by a flood.

Finding Normal by Stephanie Faris. Simon & Schuster, 2023, 275 pages.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, Ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages 10-14

The current crisis in Temple Baxter’s life is that she can’t go to the biggest sleepover of the year. Pandora, the most popular girl at Temple’s school is hosting, and everybody will be there. Dad is easier to negotiate with than Mom, so there may yet be a chance–but soon it will be evident that Temple doesn’t know what crisis means. Reality burst upon her when a flood blots out her neighborhood and forces her family first into a shelter, then a hotel.

With no flood insurance, her family must bear most of the repair costs themselves, meaning they can’t afford Temple’s private girls’ school and she’ll have to start all over at the local public school. Worse, the only kid she knows there is the neighbor boy, an unbearable tease.

Too much of the premise, perhaps, is the familiar learning-who-your-true-friends-are theme. More development of the losing-everything theme might have made a stronger story. But there’s enough here to make readers wonder what they might feel in a similar situation. The author suffered similar deprivation in the Nashville floods of 2010, so she writes from experience. Temple finds a way not only to adapt, but to use her talents and act positively in a challenging situation, and that’s a worthwhile theme.

Overall Rating: 3.75

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 4

Read more about our ratings here.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Review: For a similar story of a girl finding a way forward in severe deprivation, see our starred review of A Duet for Home.
• Review: Flood is a sometimes-harrowing picture book of the devastation wrought by this natural disaster. Also see our review of Zane and the Hurricane.
• Resource: What to do in challenging circumstances? See our Learning to Lead booklist!

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