Driving Home a Love of Middle Grade Books
Caroline Gertler
Caroline Gertler is the author of MANY POINTS OF ME (2021) and WHERE YOU'VE GOT TO BE (2022), both published by Greenwillow/HarperCollins. A former children’s book editor, Caroline has an MA in art history and gives tours of Old Master paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was raised in New York City and still lives there, on the Upper West Side, just across town from the Met, with her family.
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Where You've Got to Be
This year everything was different.
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Nolie didn’t expect sixth grade to change everything.
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But lately her ballet-obsessed big sister is even more temperamental than usual and turns away from Nolie when she tries to ask what’s wrong.
And her best friend, Jessa, seems determined to act older and cooler—and she wants Nolie to do the same. Even though Nolie has always been happy just the way she is. Does she want to be different?
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Maybe all she needs is a little guidance. A little luck. Grandma won’t miss her antique compass, right? And how much would Jessa mind if she borrowed her lucky necklace?
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Suddenly, Nolie is on a path she didn’t mean to go down, and she has real reasons to atone on Yom Kippur. Can she find her way back to where—and who—she wants to be?
Many Points of Me
When Georgia finds a secret sketch her late father—a famed artist—left behind, the discovery leads her down a path that may reshape everything holding her family and friends together.
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Georgia Rosenbloom’s father was a famous artist. His most well-known paintings were a series of asterisms—patterns of stars—that he created. One represented a bird, one himself, and one Georgia’s mother. There was supposed to be a fourth asterism, but Georgia’s father died before he could paint it. Georgia’s mother and her best friend, Theo, are certain that the last asterism would’ve been of Georgia, but Georgia isn’t so sure. She isn’t sure about anything anymore—including whether Theo is still her best friend.
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Then Georgia finds a sketch her father made of her. One with pencil points marked on the back—just like those in the asterism paintings. Could this finally be the proof that the last painting would have been of her?
Georgia’s quest to prove her theory takes her around her Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was almost a second home to Georgia, having visited favorite artists and paintings there constantly with her father. But the sketch leads right back to where she’s always belonged—with the people who love her no matter what.
