
Reach for this book when your child is grappling with feeling different due to a physical condition or is dealing with the quiet stress of financial instability at home. Twelve-year-old Ked Eakins faces a world that feels increasingly stacked against him: he has a spinal condition called kyphosis, his mother has left, and his father is struggling with a gambling addiction. However, Ked finds his voice and his agency through the school's Maker Space, using engineering and creativity to rebuild his sense of self. This is a poignant and realistic look at resilience that avoids being overly sentimental. It speaks to middle-grade readers (ages 8 to 12) about the power of finding a community where you are valued for what you can create rather than how you look. It is a powerful choice for parents wanting to validate a child's feelings of isolation while offering a concrete path toward hope and self-reliance.
Deals with parental abandonment and the stress of potential homelessness.
Central plot involves a parent's gambling addiction and the resulting financial crisis.
The book handles bullying related to physical disability and parental gambling addiction with a direct, secular, and unflinching lens. The resolution is realistic: it doesn't offer a magical cure for his spine or his father's addiction, but it provides a hopeful path forward based on community support and personal boundaries.
A middle-schooler who enjoys tinkering or STEM but also feels like a social outlier. This is perfect for the child who feels the weight of 'grown-up' problems at home and needs to see a peer navigating similar burdens.
Parents should be aware of the depiction of gambling addiction; it is portrayed as a genuine sickness that causes harm to the child. Read cold, but be ready to discuss the reality of addiction. A parent might choose this after hearing their child describe themselves negatively ('broken' or 'weird') because of bullying or feeling different, or if a child expresses anxiety about the family's financial situation.
Younger readers will focus on the cool Maker Space projects and the bullying dynamics. Older readers will more deeply internalize the heavy emotional labor Ked performs for his father and the nuance of his social exclusion.
Unlike many books featuring characters with disabilities that focus on medical journeys, this focuses on engineering as a form of social and emotional survival. """
Ked Eakins lives in a small Maine town and navigates life with kyphosis, a spinal curvature that makes him a target for bullies. His home life is precarious: his mother is gone, and his father has gambled away the rent money. Ked decides to take matters into his own hands by using the school's Maker Space to build and sell a specialized project to recoup the funds, eventually finding unexpected allies in the process.
This overview was generated by AI based on the book's content and reviews, and may not capture every nuance.
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