Introduction

Any librarian can tell you that one of life’s great joys are the Advance Reader Copies from major librarian conferences. (It could also be considered a curse depending on the size of your carry-on!) It’s a lot of fun to be able to read books ahead of their release to get a better sense of how they’ll fit in a collection. Doodles from the Boogie Down by Stephanie Rodriguez is a great example of this – I picked up an ARC from the 2023 LibLearnX conference this past January and have been sitting on it until we got closer to the publishing date. I’m so glad a copy of it landed in my lap! This is an adorable story. Let’s dive in below.

The Good Stuff

I have to get this out of the way – this book is SO STINKING CUTE!!! Gosh, I got major cute aggression reading it. Our main character, Steph, is a preteen-tweenager getting ready to apply to high schools while navigating middle schools with her best friends. The only thing she likes more than hanging out with Ana and Tiff is making art in her classes with Ms. Santiago. That said, her mom doesn’t understand that art can be more than a hobby and doesn’t want her daughter going to the public art school. Steph has to figure out how to follow her dreams any way she can.

That’s the basic premise of this book and it is executed so sweetly. Rodriguez writes to those of us who grew up in the era of JLo and N’Sync on MTV’s TLC – a lot of the imagery will be familiar to those of us 90’s children. This book is somewhat autobiographical according to the author, so it makes sense. This does mean that some story elements are a bit dated and might have to be explained to kids reading it now, but those details make it enormously entertaining for adults who read it too. Many other elements of the story – figuring out high school while also trying to survive middle school, navigating changing relationships and understandings of your friends – are timeless in their relevance to kids.

Rodriguez does a great job of fleshing out the characters no matter how big or small their role. We’re brought fully into Steph’s world, although Rodriguez also does a phenomenal job of building Steph’s (and our) understanding of why the other characters might act certain ways toward Steph. This has been a building trend in children’s fiction for a while, but it’s still so nice to see it done with care.

Finally, I have to mention the art. Rodriguez’ art is a large part of what makes this book UNBEARABLY CUTE. You might think that the art style is simple, but that’s simply not true. Rodriguez gives us clear characters and expressions that shine even in my black-and-white ARC copy. Luckily for you, the published version will be in full color. If the cover and end papers of this ARC are anything to go off of, we are in for a real treat.

In Summary

This belongs on the shelf everywhere. If your patrons love Raina Telgemeier’s or Svetlana Chmakova’s books, they’re going to love this one too. This book is highly recommended.

Doodles from the Boogie Down is written by Stephanie Rodriguez. It’s published by Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Random House. You can order it at the publisher’s site linked here. As always, gichi miigwech for reading!