Messy Perfect, by Tanya Boteju

Years ago, Cassie and her best friend Ben got caught dressing up in each other's clothes.  It wasn't so bad for Cassie to be seen in Ben's trousers, but Ben wearing her skirt took some more effort.  But rather than explain the truth when the rumors began to fly, Cassie abandoned Ben to bullying homophobia.  A few weeks later, Ben left the school.

Now, he's back. Wracked by guilt for her childhood cowardice, Cassie is determined to make things right and she alights on the idea of setting up a Gay Straight Alliance in her very conservative Catholic school.  Allying with an existing GSA at a nearby public school, Cassie starts a secret campaign of "pop ups" to make her school more gay friendly (and thus easier for Ben).  But as the project consumes more and more of her time, Cassie's grades start to suffer and her relationships with her friends and family begin to fray.

As for her goal to fix the mistakes of her past, it doesn't quite work out as she planned.  Ben is amused, but strangely non-committal to the project and Cassie begins to realize that making her school more accepting to queer students may be more important to her personally than she's comfortable admitting.

Cassie is a perfectionist who makes plenty of messy mistakes along the way in this story but does a decent job of knowing how to fix those errors and come back better -- a mash-up that gives the book its title.  While the novel can be boringly repetitive and overly preachy about the importance of safe spaces, Cassie's journey into self-discovery is compelling.  I liked her and also the many supporting characters as well -- a colorful cast of peers who represent an exuberant form of teen queerdom that has fallen out of fashion in YA lit shockingly quickly in the wake of terrorized libraries.  Far more so, I appreciated a strong presence of adults in this story, ranging from the keen librarian to the surprisingly sympathetic principal to a mother who was confident enough to know when to crack down and when to let up.

The Winter of the Dollhouse, by Laura Anne Schlitz

Tiph struggles to be seen by her family and at odds with her stepmother.  Tiph loves dolls and everything about dolls, but her stepmother doesn't understand why she wants to spend all of her money on doll house accessories.  But one day, outside of the local toy store, Tiph meets an old Hungarian woman who does understand her.  Tiph is fantasizing about owning an antique German doll of Gretel when the woman collapses on the street.  Tiph ends up helping the woman gets home and is entranced to find that she owns a fabulous old doll house.

The old woman needs help around the help and they develop a plan whereby Tiph will do chores and earn money to purchase dolls.  meanwhile, the woman invites Tiph to play with hers.  Tiph, however, has a problem with kleptomancy that is getting her into trouble and when one of the lady's dolls disappears, suspicion falls in Tiph.

Gretel the doll is in a panic.  She wants to be Tiph's as much as Tiph wants her and if the mystery of the missing doll is not solved, this will never happen.  So, the toys work away at a plan to fix everything.  And in the process of doing so, they discover an ancient doll that reveals secrets about the old lady.

Meanwhile, there is a school production of The Wizard of Oz that Tiph is in.  Disappointed with her part as a munchkin, she is encouraged by the old lady to volunteer to understudy for the Wicked Witch (which is the part she really wants).  When the actress playing the witch falls ill, Tiph gets her opportunity.

Along the way, Tiph works out her issues with her stepmother and learns that adults have very complex lives.  All in all, it is a very busy story!  While much of this is well-written and the individual threads make great stories, it is terribly unfocused.  Was this a story about Tiph learning to stand up for herself and/or understanding the importance of honesty?  Was this a story of the old woman coming to terms with her lost childhood?  Or of a mother and daughter coming to mutual understanding?  Or of the dolls getting the humans to sort out their problems so they would be played with?  Likely, it is all of those things, but it left me with distractions, being thrown from one thread to another when, even at the very end, nothing seemed to come together.

Orris and Timble: The Beginning, by Kate DiCamillo

The first in a trilogy of early reader books about the unlikely friendship of Orris the rat and Timble the owl. When Timble gets caught in an abandoned mouse trap, Orris struggles with whether to help free him or not.  Remembering the tale of the Lion and the Mouse, Orris reasons with himself that helping Timble will mean that Timble will owe him a debt of gratitude.  When Timble simply flies away, Orris is upset that he didn't even get a thank you.  But a much greater gift awaits.

Quirky and sweet in the way that all of DiCamillo's works tend to be.  The deeper meaning of the story is probably not going to sink in to the target audience's minds, but this easy-to-read book is engaging enough to lead the reader to the rest of the series.

The Danger of Small Things, by Caryl Lewis

In the near future, the bees have died off.  And along with them, the various species of plants that rely on bees to be pollinated.  And along with those, the animals that feed on those plants.  In sum, the death of pollinating insects has caused a global food collapse.  Panic, wars, and the downfall of civilization follow shortly thereafter.  So far, so interesting.

In the aftermath, young girls are sent to concentration camps where they are worked to the bone using brushes to pollinate the fruit and nut trees by hand in hopes of raising a crop that can in turn be sold to support the totalitarian regime under which they live.  This is only until they reach puberty, when they are "married" off to young soldiers to make children for the regime.

Jess is one of those girls.  She was sent to the camp when she and her brother were caught trying to cross the border and escape.  Initially distrusted by most of the other girls and targeted by the camp's queen bee, Jess becomes the leader of a quiet rebellion in the camp.  To foment an uprising, she creates secret works of art to agitate the masses.

From a fascinating premise, the novel falls back on so many familiar dystopian tropes -- from the beginning (lifted from Handmaid's Tale) to the pro-natalist plotline (Divergent).  An evil priest and a bullying queen bee offer little new to a story that can't seem to decide whether military regimes or high school cliques are worst.  It's tired material and a story that adds little to the genre.  It also makes very little sense -- the fruitless effort to hand pollinate on the industrial scale that modern apiculture attempts, the strange waste of resources using hand-made brushes, the mystery of what the little boys are up to, and so on.  Disappointing exposition on an original and thought-provoking idea.

Bad Badger: A Love Story, by Maryrose Wood (ill. by Giulia Ghigini)

Septimus loves to watch sunsets from his porch as he listens to opera and sips chamomile tea.  All of which makes him a bad badger.  He doesn't even look like one!  Instead of the stripes that all badgers are supposed to have, he has spots.  Perhaps he isn't even a badger at all?  He might have a better time sorting out his conundrum if he knew any other badgers.

For while Septimus enjoys his quiet life, he longs for a friend.  And when he is visited by a friendly gull, Septimus does everything he can to make Gully feel at home.  In subsequent visits, the two of them explore their shared interests and their differences (Gully loves the ocean, for example, but Septimus hates to get sand in his fur!).  The visits become so regular that Septimus comes to take Gully and her company for granted.  But then one day Gully doesn't show up on the porch.  Days pass and still no Gully!  Septimus goes in search of his friend and learns some powerful lessons about friendship along the way.

A delightful and quirky book.  Charmingly insecure, Septimus (a badger "within acceptable parameters") frets and worries in a funny way that will delight children and adults.  While there is a story for children here, it really is an adult story -- full of meditations about the compromises that one makes in friendships and the way in which friendships enhance our lives.  The ultimate lesson about acceptance ties the story's sweet and timeless message with a bow.  

The first of a series intent on exploring relationship building.

The Unexpected Lives of Ordinary Girls, by J. Anderson Coats

In 1910, in a mining town in Colorado, Stanislava doesn't have a lot of options.  The daughter of Slovenian immigrants, she is expected to marry and have lots of children.  Her family is dirt poor. The boys work with their father at the smelter and meanwhile the girls take care of the babies and the housework.  But until now, Stanislava has been able to go to school and read books.  This has stirred big ideas in her head.  She dreams of actually going to college.  She dreams of renaming herself Sylvia and no longer being looked down upon as a "Bohunk."

But when her older sister runs away and elopes with a Protestant man, Stanislava is pulled out of school and set to work helping her mother get all of the chores done. No longer allowed to go to school or read books, she can feel her dreams slip away.  So, she decides to run away herself to the big city of Denver.  There, she stumbles across the public library and eventually finds a home there.

An entertaining and fast paced adventure of survival against the odds for a young girl trying to eke by a living and running up against sexism, racism, and tradition.  There are a fair share of anachronisms and a fair share of improbably good fortune, but it doesn't detract from the thrill of the story.  Stanislava/Sylvia is intelligent and clever and full of lots of great ideas -- the hallmark of a children's heroine.

Books on the immigrant experience of Eastern European immigrants are few and far between.  While this is hardly an educational book, there is enough period detail here to send a curious reader to the non-fiction shelves.

Butterfly Heart, by Moa Backe Astot

Vilda, a half-Swedish half-Sami teen, has been grown curious about her ethnicity.  Her mother doesn't know Sami and Vilda never got to attend a Sami-speaking school, so Vilda's never learned how the language.  Her grandfather though has been teaching her a few words and she's hungry to learn more.  She also wants to get a gabdde (a traditional ethnic outfit) so she can wear it at festivals and show off her heritage.  But then her grandfather suddenly dies.

Wracked by grief and a realization that learning how to be Sami has just grown all the more harder, she stumbles through the summer trying to piece her plans back together again.  There's a cute older boy who speaks Sami, who she pins her hopes on, but he rejects her as being a child.  She unsuccessfully tries to explain her feelings about not knowing her heritage and losing her grandfather to her bewildered friends.  To top it all of, she's just gotten her first period.

A spare story of grief and search for identity through the eyes of a thirteen year-old.  American audiences won't know much about the Sami -- an indigenous people who live in northern Scandinavia -- but the search for one's heritage and where one fits in should be meaningful to anyone.  Vilda can be pretty mean at times and definitely selfish (and her use of language will trigger some parental readers) but her coarse edges and big feelings struck a realistic note.

17 & Gone, by Nova Ren Suma

Seventeen year-old Lauren sees missing girls.  Girls who ran away, girls who stepped out for a minute, girls who got into the wrong car.  All of them seventeen like her and now gone.  It started when she found an old missing person flyer, but quickly became an obsession as she hunts down more examples and finds out how many of them there are.  How easy it is to become "gone" where you're young and female.  

The girls talk to her, telling her their stories and how to find them.  They tell her the things they wish they could tell their families.  Lauren has become a conduit for them. And in doing so, she loses touch with herself.

A graceful story of a descent into schizophrenia -- a common enough trope in YA.  What makes this one stand out is its theme:  the danger of being female and seventeen.  A lot of seventeen year-old women  disappear. They are hard to find and frequently disappear under circumstances that leave them abandoned and forgotten.  A young woman runs away from home.  Does she disappear because she doesn't want to be found or because she has been abducted?  Or perhaps initially the first and then the latter?  And for those safe at home, how easy is it to become overwhelmed by all the dangers that are out there?  All of the reasons and ways in which a girl can become gone?  And how seemingly little concern there is that so many of them are missing?  The novel, as compelling as it is in its storytelling, is equally unsettling in its message.

A Scar Like A River, by Lisa Graff

Fallon is keeping three secrets inside of her.  One of them is the truth about how she got a deep jagged scar across her face.  The other two are so horrible she can't even think of approaching them.  But when her uncle dies, she realizes that she wants to start talking about these secrets.  To her horror, when she tries to tell someone, she finds that she doesn't know how to do so.

Told in three parts, this story about sexual abuse becomes most compelling in its final section.  There's no real surprise about what  actually happened to Fallon, which creates some drawn out and tedious reading in the first two parts -- one of which addresses her realization that she has to start talking and the other her struggle to actually do so.  It's only in the final section, when speaking out creates complications in her relationships with her family, that the novel becomes suddenly engrossing and original. That's a long battle with little pay-off.  It also does not help that the book is stuffed with fluff (her facial injury, Fallon's mother's illness, a protest at school against the school musical, a classmate who can't pay for her lunches, etc.) that doesn't relate or contribute to the story.

Lies We Tell About the Stars, by Susie Nadler

After the Big One hits San Francisco, Celeste can't find her best friend Nicky.  The library, where he likely was at the time of the quake, has been reduced to rubble.  So when Nicky fails to materialize, people suspect the worst and he is eventually pronounced dead.  However, Celeste knows something:  right before the quake, Nicky was talking about going away, disappearing for a while.  Convinced that her friend is in hiding and not dead, she starts looking for him and finds tantalizing clues that he might still be alive.

Before all of this, they were both obsessed with space and the upcoming missing to Mars.  And as Celeste's search continues, she becomes obsessed with the notion that Nicky may have headed to Cape Canaveral, to be at the launch.  So, Celeste uses her savings to go to Florida in a desperate last effort to find Nicky.  There, she finds something far more impactful.  An epilogue, of sorts, either caps off the story or ruins it -- if you're worried by such things, you can skip it without suffering too much!

This is a languid novel that never really figures out where it is heading.  Despite that lack of direction, the story still makes plenty of mistakes. The quake, Celeste and Nicky's friendship (in flashback), and an aborted romance with another boy all feel like wrong turns.  Even Celeste's health problems, which is screaming out to be a pivotal plot point somewhere in the story, are never utilized as much of anything except a periodic insubstantial annoyance.  There are many fine ideas here, but I was left wondering what for?

The Walls Around Us, by Nova Ren Suma

Violet, about to graduate and start dance school in New York, has everything before her.  Amber, incarcerated in a maximum security juvenile detention facility, has nothing.  But they are tied together by a third girl, Orianna, who was arrested for murder.  

Told through the author's hazy mix of unreliable narration, magic and hallucinations, and liberal use of flashback and foretelling, who did what to whom is both instantly known and a mystery until the final page. 

Like her other novels, it's beautifully written prose but full of grotesque and horrifying imagery.  Calling this a ghost story is technically correct but oversimplifies a novel that is as much about adolescent insecurity as it is about justice from the grave.

As in the other novels I have read, I enjoy the complex structure and the sparseness of the exposition, but was found myself frustrated by the repetition and the oblique storytelling.  Nova Ren Suma does this style quite well, but having now read three novels of hers in this genre and this format, I yearn for a change and something different from her.

Room to Breathe, by Kasie West

FBI agents ransacking the house one morning is how Indy discovers that her father has been accused of committing fraud.  But while the accusation and the subsequent investigation puts great strain on her and her family, Indy isn't allowed to tell any of her friends.  Suffering in enforced silence, her academics and her social relationships suffer.  She isolates herself, cuts off her friends, and ends up hanging out with a loser skateboarder who only adds to her troubles.

Then, through a twist of fate, she finds herself locked in the faculty bathroom with her former best friend Beau.  Stuck together for the next twenty hours or so, they have no choice but to dredge up recent events, confront each other, and work through their problems.  Told in alternating "then" and "now" chapters, their shared captivity leads to an easy-to-anticipate romantic breakthrough.

Cute and surprisingly breezy romance, in which the heavier material about family disintegration and Indy's acting out stands in awkward juxtaposition.  There's some pretty heavy stuff going on in this story for a story that obviously mostly wants to be about Indy and Beau finding each other.  There certainly would have been easier ways for that to have been pulled off.  

Take A Sad Song, by Ona Gritz

When the police come to apprehend Jane at a party, she demands to speak with her mother, only to find that it is her mother that called the police in the first place.  Declared incorrigible by her Mom and the courts, Jane is sent to Spofford and then to a year at the New York State Training School for girls in Hudson.  In 1970, your parents or just about any adult could get a child locked up and sentenced to servitude.  

On the inside, Jane suffers through abuse, bullying, and solitary confinements.  To cope, she becomes part of a pseudo family that the girls call "The Racket" whose members look out for each other and lend each other emotional support.

Told in brisk verse, this engaging story is far too short.  What's on offer is teasingly brief.  It's sufficient to tell the story and whet the appetite, but there's a meatier novel yet to write with this material.  Indeed, it could have benefitted from more fleshing out of the girls' backgrounds and the relationships they have with each other.

A Room Away from the Wolves, by Nova Ren Suma

Bina holds a deep resentment towards her mother.  Years ago, they nearly succeeded in running away to New York to escape Bina's abusive Dad.  But on the way out of town, they were "rescued" by a man who gave them a safe place to sleep.  Bina's Mom decided she liked it there and abandoned their plan, but Bina never did.  After years in this new prison, Bina decides to run away finally to the City on her own.

She has a destination -- Catherine House -- a boarding house for young women trying to escape from their pasts. But when she finds it, it seems to not be the haven she had hoped for.  Bina is allowed to move in to the recently vacated (and only available) room and is welcomed but not welcome.  The place is full of mysterious passages, invisible staff, secrets, and a foreboding sense of tragedy. At first desperate to be allowed to stay, Bina begins to fear that she will never be allowed to leave.

Mystery upon mystery are piled on in this atmospheric horror novel.  But while well-written, the story is too much mystery and too little resolution.  The author delights in presenting things that don't make sense and then compounding secrets with characters who do not explain themselves and a protagonist who tries too little to figure things out.  Rather than resolve any of this in the end, she simply piles more mysteries on, leaving us with the burning question of "what the f*** was that all about?!"

Nobody in Particular, by Sophie Gonzales

Danni, the poor American scholarship student, is fleeing a bad school experience.  Princess Rosemary is trying to rebuild her reputation and repair some broken friendships after a scandalous tragedy in Amsterdam.  Falling into each other's arms in this Princess Diaries-like fantasy isn't going to be easy, but no worries.  Boarding school with a royal is really just like American public high school, but you get to wear a tiara!  In other words, pure and unabashed escapism with lots of angst around friendships and a few serious concerns about coming out.  

It's sweet and fun.  At times quite steamy and sexy (the cover probably is enough to get the book banned across Florida!), we never quite forget that these are teens with all the strong and serious feels.  Grownups are generally in the background and useless.  

The novel was wildly entertaining and worth a read.  But there's not a serious bone in its storyline, despite some intimations at the end that a lesbian queen might just be the thing to shake up a stagnant monarchy.

Love Me Tomorrow, by Emiko Jean

After watching her parents separate, Emma has grown cynical about romance and love.  But she is forced to reconsider her hard heartedness when she starts receiving letters from someone who claims to be the love of her life in the future.  Naturally skeptical, she becomes convinced that this is for real when the letter writer starts describing personal secrets she has never (yet) shared with anyone else.  Now convinced, she begins to look for clues of the writer's identity comparing things he's let slip with things she learns about her friends.  Each new lead makes her question her decisions, wondering if this person or that person is the future letter writer and love of her life, and questioning every choice she makes.  In the end, she realizes that regardless of who this person is, she does indeed believe in love after all.

A sweet concept that serves as a launching point for Emma's development of faith and personal confidence.  With the exception of the premise, we are on familiar and satisfying territory as Emma's hard heart melts and she realizes that she is not only capable of love but she is eager to have that happy ending her pen pal from the future promises.  Along the way, she also develops a more mature understanding of her parents and the decisions that they made.  Finally, a little twist at the end provides just the right amount of uncertainty for a satisfying conclusion.

Wake the Wild Creatures, by Nova Ren Soma

Raised in a abandoned and abandoned vacation resort in the Catskills, Talia spent the first thirteen years of her life cut off from the world.  Her mother, a fugitive from justice, sheltered them in this place (called the "Neves"), which somehow was invisible to outsiders.  With time, other women (and their children) were selected to join them.  Each woman, like Talia's mother, fleeing from men -- fathers, brothers, husbands, etc. -- who have hurt them.  At the Neves, they can live in a sorority of consensus decision making and peace.

But as the community grows, its tensions grown and its contradictions start to tear it apart.  And then one day they are betrayed.  Her mother is arrested and the sanctity of the place is violated.  Captured and forced to live with an unknown aunt, Talia tries to acclimate into a new life in the outside world.  Never fitting in, she bides her time and tries to find a way to reunite with her mother and return to the Neves.

A beautifully-told magical realist novel that combines striking naturalism with Talia's keen and stark perceptions of human behavior.  Talia is the star of the show and one of the stronger and more captivating heroines that I've seen in recent YA stories.   There's plenty here about the struggles of mothers and daughters, the way women and girls mistreat each other, and a bit about sibling rivalry.  What's strikingly absent is any sort of romantic angle.  The fact that you won't miss it is testament to a story that has something meaningful to say about girls that doesn't involve angst over boyfriends (or girlfriends).  Strikingly original ideas combined with strong lyrical prose makes this an engrossing read.  It's one of those deep thinking books that will leave you pondering its meaning and messages long afterwards.  Strongly recommended.

Sometimes the Girl, by Jennifer Mason-Black

Maya's dreamed of being a writer, but after a bad mentoring experience, she's given up on her novel.  She's focused now solely on following her ex-girlfriend on a trip to New Zealand to do farming for a few months.  To earn the money to make the trip, Maya agrees to take a job helping Elsie McAllister clear out her attic.

Elsie is the author of one of the greatest novels of the previous century.  Maya and just about every other schoolchild has read the book.  Notably, Elsie never wrote a follow-up but instead faded into obscurity about the novel's publication.  Maya wonders why, of course, but Elsie isn't volunteering any answers.  Instead, Elsie issues terse instructions for how to dispose of her possessions.

Maya can't help but be curious about the old woman and as she retrieves box after box of mementos and paraphernalia of Elsie's life, inventorying the contents for her boss, she sift through them for clues.  Meanwhile, Elsie's grown children, suspicious that there may be an unpublished manuscript hiding upstairs, apply pressure to Maya to set aside anything of significant literary value.  And Elsie makes Maya promise to do no such thing.

Filled with a variety of stories, the most compelling sections have to do with the revelations about Elsie than Maya uncovers.  There's an effort to portray Maya's own life (and her struggles) as relevant or parallel, but Maya's story simply isn't as interesting.  For example, somewhere in all of this is a story about Maya's older brother committing suicide, but it barely captured my attention.  The story of Elsie's lost love and the horrid circumstances that led to her death, on the other hand, are burned into my mind. In that context, Maya brings just the right amount of grit and fortitude to make her relationship with the bitter and grumpy Elsie compelling and revealing.

This is a mature book, misclassified as YA simply because of its focus on coming of age, but actually not really focused at all on adolescence.  Part gay history and part speculation about real writers (like Harper Lee) who had only one great novel in them.

The Judgement of Yoyo Gold, by Isaac Blum

Yoyo has always been an exemplary Jewish girl, serving as a model in the way that being the rabbi's daughter seems to require.  Taking care of her younger brothers and sisters, doing well in school, and mediating for her peers is exhausting but she relishes the way it makes her feel.  In her Orthodox community, she feels at home and just hopes that she is a credit to her family.  It's hard these days because she had a close friend who had a falling out and was sent away.  The absence leaves her feeling lonely and even more committed to doing good and to counter the judging eyes of the community that she feels upon her.

She's also a teenager in contemporary society.  From a non-Orthodox acquaintance, she learns about TikTok videos.  Her own phone is filtered and social media are definitely forbidden, but she gets excited by the technology and, following a rumor, finds a boy name Shua in her community who can hack her phone.  She's surprised to find out from him that many other kids have used his help to overcome the phone filters.  It would seem that the community is not quite as virtuous and pious as she grew up thinking.

These revelations keep coming.  And when she spies on a particularly self-righteous girl from her community eating unkosher food, she's scandalized and she hatches a plan.  Following the example of others, she creates her own anonymous TikTok video in which she complains about the girl's behavior.  The post goes viral and, while Yoyo's role in it remains secret, she is enthralled by the attention it receives.  Soon, she is posting other exposes about her community.

Meanwhile, she's also finding herself tempted in other ways, especially by Shua, for whom she discovers a forbidden attraction.

A well-nuanced study of the life of a modern Orthodox girl -- a complex mix of modernism with traditional faith.  Her mature reasoning skills, tempered by her adolescent impetuousness, made for an interesting character study.  And her pride and the sense of self that she develops by the end was immensely gratifying.  

I was disappointed by her descent into cyber-bullying and her lack of genuine repentance, but justice is dealt out and lessons learned.  And I was actually surprised at the amount of freedom she had as a young woman, but much of that leeway may have been because of her responsible reputation.

Just Harriet, by Elana K Arnold

Harriet likes things to stay the way they are, but with her mother expecting a baby that doesn't seem too likely.  And when Mom gets prescribed bed rest, Harriet finds herself and her kitty sent to grandma's for the summer.  Grandma runs a bed and breakfast on an island, a place Harriet has loved visiting in the past, but not like this!

Unhappy with being away from home, unhappy that Mom and Dad are not available to her, and unhappy that everything is changing, Harriet mopes and says mean things she doesn't mean.  

Nothing makes her happy until she discovers a mysterious key.  No matter where she looks, she can't figure out what it unlocks!  She searches all over the bed and breakfast and across the island.  When she does find is mate, a lot more than she expected will be unlocked.

Falling into the trope that the most appealing early reader protagonists are bratty, Harriet is a bit much to take.  And the fact that her meanness is endlessly forgiven and indulged lessens my interest in her otherwise amusing character.  The more fatal flaw of the book, though, is its lack of a substantive story.  The mystery of the key ought to have some sort of adventure connected with it, but what happens is resolved too quickly to provide a meaningful payoff.  The artwork is cute and Harriet's naughtiness may appeal to young readers, but mostly the book seems designed for easy lessons about what mistakes Harriet makes.