THE MOON WITHOUT STARS

THE MOON WITHOUT STARS by Chanel Miller

YELLOW LIGHT WITH CAUTION

AGES: 6TH-8TH GRADE

Moon Without Stars is the latest release from Chanel Miller hailed as the new Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret for today's generation. This is a very popular book right now, and I thought it important to read and write about.

Luna is entering the seventh grade alongside her best friend, Scott, Both of them have always remained outside the popular group at school that is known for their beauty, wealth, and cruelty. That has always been okay with them both to remain outside of it, but for the first time, through an ironic twist, Luna has an opportunity to join the group because of a kindness she has begun doing.

What is this kindness? She's noticed that her peers struggle with acceptance and an intense fear of change for a variety of reasons in their lives. Whether its embarrassment about eczema, pimples on a back, fear of butterflies, not having a certain brand of water bottle, overwhelmed by the news, only able to eat beige foods, allergies, never being enough, nightmares about drowning and on and on, everyone seems to have something that causes uncertainty and could potentially become grounds for being made fun of if ever found out. Luna has a gift. She begins writing zines, small booklets, on the different topics, and they get passed around school helping her peers begin to look at the issues through new eyes. While several of the topics are fine to deal with in this manner, some revolve around a more sexual nature: boobs that are uneven sizes, masturbation, being attracted to girls when I'm a girl, and so on. The book doesn't talk about all of the zines that Luna writes, so its unknown if she deals with every topic she receives.

In the process of writing all of these booklets, Luna is confronted with lots of things she's never considered before now that she's hanging out with the popular group:: using her zines as fix-it books for others (cruel little books on all the things wrong with a peer), stealing, what she thinks about a gay classmate, sexting, perfectionism, and her uncool best friend, Scott.

To add another layer to all of this, Luna initially navigates this on her own. Her artistic mother is bipolar and goes through major swings including times when she is unavailable shutting herself up in the garage for days on end working on art projects or dealing with crippling depression. The weight of everything begins to hang on Luna the further in with the popular group she gets, and she begins to change drastically.

There are definitely parts in the book that are unnecessary. As mentioned, Luna's mom is an artist, and on her good days, she will sometimes host gatherings in her home for local artists featuring a naked model for everyone to draw or paint from. Luna has walked in on this and seen a naked male in all of his maleness which was very disturbing for her.

Summing this book up, I think what makes me incredibly sad is how true a lot of it is for seventh grade kids. There is so much extra baggage to navigate in today's world that was never meant to be carried or experienced by our youth. Layer after layer of despair and worry pile on, and it's not a stretch to close the book and wonder how kids survive it all. It's a far cry from the Philippians 4:8 verse that tells us to think about things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, etc, and we're paying a price for it.

HEADS UP - There is a lot of crass remarks. There is one profanity. The book contains a lot of sexual topics/talk. Periods and tampons are discussed quite a bit including how to use a tampon.