Swinarski, Claire. What Happened To Rachel Riley? HarperCollins/Quill Tree, 01/2023. 343pp. Fiction GRADES 4 – 7. Trade $16.99. 978-0-06-321309-8. OUTSTANDING.
Favorably compared to Barbara Dee’s Maybe He Just Likes You, this semi-epistolary novel explores why eighth grader Rachel Riley has become an outcast at her middle school. The story is told by Anna, a new student at the school, who has been assigned an un-essay project where she decides to create a serialized podcast to discover what happened to the formerly popular Rachel Riley. The mystery slowly unfolds via emails, letters, text messages, and interviews interspersed with text chapters. What initially appears to be a story about cliques and bullying turns out to be about systematic sexual harassment: a years-long boys against girls “game” of butt-slapping and bra-snapping, that is minimized by school authorities and awkwardly laughed at by both victims and perpetrators. Ultimately this is a story about calling out and standing up to harassment even if it’s an unpopular thing to do. The story is set in Madison, WI. The main character is Polish and most of the characters appear to be white.
Rachael Reiley—Hillcrest Elementary K-8, Oakland Unified School District