This episode is sponsored by Still a Work in Progress by Joe Knowles.

In a return to middle grade fiction, master of perspectives Joe Knowles depicts a younger sibling

struggling to maintain his everyday life when his older sister is in crisis.

Noah is just trying to make it through seventh grade.

The girls are confusing, the homework is boring,

and even his friends are starting to bug him.

Not to mention that his older sister Emma has been acting pretty strange, even though Noah thought she'd been doing better ever since the thing they don't talk about.

The only place Noah really feels at peace is an art class with a block of clay in his hands.

As it becomes clear through Emma's ever stricter food

rules and regulations that she's not really doing any better at all,

the normal seventh grade year Noah was hoping for

begins to seem pretty unattainable. In an affecting and realistic

novel with bright spots of humor, Joe Knowles captures the complexities of navigating

middle school while feeling hopeless in the face of a family crisis.

Still a work in progress is available wherever books are sold.

Welcome to a special episode of the Book Riot Podcast. Jeff and I talked several weeks ago about

JetBlue's Soar with Reading Program that puts book vending machines around cities that are

selected by voting based on their communities.

Currently they are in Detroit.

We were really excited and fascinated by this program

that's in its sixth year.

And we are joined today by Isima Gibbs,

...