Going Overboard

Gr 5 Up–Nonbinary seventh grader Piper Shapiro and zir mother Noura are an engaging duo who love and support each other. It’s always been the two of them, and that is the way Piper likes it. Then zir mother introduces zem to Gwinny—her girlfriend—and Piper fears they might be getting serious. To make matters worse, Gwinny is zir classmate Colton’s mother, whom ze does not care for. If they get married, Colton will become zir stepbrother! There’s only one thing to do: break up the lovely couple before they walk down the aisle. When Gwinny takes the whole group on a Caribbean cruise, Piper teams up with zir faux “twin” Colton to sabotage their mothers’ plans. As Operation Break Up is put into action, the kids begin to have fun working together to thwart their mothers’ relationship. Huntoon strikes the perfect balance between lighthearted and sweet to thoughtful and honest while dealing with serious topics important to many tweens, including same sex-marriage nonbinary identity, deadnames, found family, interpersonal relationships, traversing “normal” middle school angst, bullying, middle school mean antics, and neopronouns.