by Becky Albertalli & Aisha Saeed, 436 pages, Grades 7 and up.

Canvassing for a candidate when you are not even old enough to vote is not how Jamie, a white Jewish kid from Atlanta, expected to spend his free time, but here he is. Maya, a Pakistani American Muslim kid, feels passionate about defeating the current senator who wants to ban the wearing of hijabi which feels Islamophobic and threatening to Maya’s community. This is how Maya finds herself partnered with Jamie for canvassing to elect a more progressive candidate. Jamie is, at first, painfully shy, but the two become friends as they grow as activists. Life is complicated; everyone’s story has more depth than you can see on the surface and it takes time to really understand people even when you spend a lot of time together working toward a shared goal.

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If you enjoy books about friendship and personal identity, you might also like: Waiting for Normal, by Leslie Connor, A Good Kind of Trouble, by Lisa Moore Ramee,The Parker Inheritance, by Varian Johnson, A Mango Shaped Space, by Wendy, Mass, or The Firefly Code, by Megan Frazer Blakemore.

Tags: family, friendship, identity, religion, politics, canvassing