Invisible Emmie

Thirteen-year-old Emmie is the quiet girl at school, the one nobody notices. She loves to draw – and is good at it too – and has a best friend, Brianna, but her crippling shyness makes school and interacting with, well, anyone, really scary.

Today, Emmie and Brianna spend their lunch writing deliberately over-the-top love letters to their respective crushes. It’s just supposed to be a bit of fun between the two friends, but when Emmie unknowingly drops one of them and it’s picked up by the most annoying kid in her class, school suddenly gets even more awkward than usual. How will Emmie handle the sudden attention?

Told over the course of just one day and presented in a graphic novel diary-type format, Invisible Emmie is entertaining, touching and funny in equal measure. Emmie’s story is interwoven with that of Katie, the girl Emmie kind of wishes she could be: popular, smiley, athletic. But as the day progresses, Emmie and Katie’s storylines begin to interact in surprising ways, and there’s a clever final twist to their story. Highly recommended for any teenager (or tweenager) and easily accessible to reluctant readers.