Pavi Sharma's Guide to Going Home

by Bridget Farr

Overview

The Fosters meets The Great Gilly Hopkins in this moving novel of a young girl who as sets off on an important mission to save a fellow foster kid from the home that still haunts her nightmares.

Twelve-year-old Pavi Sharma is an expert at the Front Door Face: the perfect mix of puppy dog eyes and a lemonade smile, the exact combination to put foster parents at ease as they open their front door to welcome you in. After being bounced around between foster families and shelter stays, Pavi is a foster care expert, and she runs a "business" teaching other foster kids all she has learned. With a wonderful foster family in mom Marjorie and brother Hamilton, things are looking up for Pavi.

Then Pavi meets Meridee: a new five-year-old foster kid, who is getting placed at Pavi's first horrendous foster home. Pavi knows no one will trust a kid about what happened on Lovely Lane, even one as mature as she is, so it's up to her to save Meridee.

With help from Hamilton, brooding eighth grader Santos, and Hamilton's somewhat obnoxious BFF Piper, they set off on an important mission with life-changing stakes. Pavi will stop at nothing to keep Meridee safe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316491051
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	671,153
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	730L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Bridget Farr is an author, actor, and educator. She's been an elementary and middle school teacher her entire career, most recently in the sixth-grade humanities program at an urban public school. She has a master's from the University of Texas at Austin and plans to become an elementary school principal. Bridget is also an actor and producer and has starred in award-winning plays, produced a popular theater series, and written a short film. Pavi Sharma's Guide to Going Home is her debut novel. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her partner, Shiva, and the neighborhood cat, Sherman.

Editorial Reviews

"Debut author Bridget Farr keeps the story moving swiftly, skillfully weaving in moments of tension that allow her diverse cast of flawed yet sympathetic characters to shine."—Publishers Weekly

"Well imagined [and] undeniable appeal."—Booklist

"A fresh, feel-good story that will make readers cheer and appreciate the home and family they may take for granted."—School Library Journal

From the Publisher

05/27/2019

After living with four families, Indian American Pavi Sharma, 12, regards herself as a foster care expert. She has developed a business helping foster kids from her former shelter adjust to new homes, teaching her clients how to greet their new family (using “Front Door Face”) and collecting Hot Cheetos and school supplies as payment. But Pavi’s meticulously ordered life is upended when she meets Meridee, a small girl who is days away from being placed with Pavi’s neglectful first foster family. Pavi prefers to keep her business separate from her current life with her nurturing foster mother and her kind foster brother Hamilton, who is Pavi’s age. But remembering with visceral fear the vicious dog fights that took place in the backyard, Pavi decides to use her knowledge of the foster care system to prevent what she is sure will be a disastrous placement, reluctantly enlisting the help of her client Santos, Hamilton, and Hamilton’s pal Piper. Despite the heavy subject matter, debut author Farr keeps the story moving swiftly, skillfully weaving in moments of tension that allow her diverse cast of flawed yet sympathetic characters to shine. Ages 8–12. Agent: Melissa Edwards, Stonesong. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

09/27/2019

Gr 4–6-After years in foster care and shelters, 12-year-old Pavi finally has a secure, happy home life with mom Marjorie and brother Hamilton. She's even a straight-A student. Still, Pavi's time in the foster system has taken its toll. She feels "tiny, smaller than the space between protons and neutrons," and helping fellow foster kids adjust to their placements makes her feel "bigger." For her professional services—research on their new families and tips on fitting in—kids pay Pavi in snacks and school supplies. Work for her newest client is pro bono: young Meridee, who's scheduled to be placed in the same nightmarish home Pavi had been in years ago. To save Meridee, Pavi risks everything she's achieved at home and school, enlisting Hamilton and his friend Piper in her scheme. Debut author Farr creates a smart, savvy, relatable character in Pavi. The girl is vulnerable yet not above using others' sympathy for her foster background to her advantage, especially to get what she wants from adults. Hamilton and Piper are perfect foils; his caring stability balances Pavi's impulsiveness, and Piper's glossy entitlement epitomizes all the privileges Pavi never had. The narrative zips between Pavi's home, school, and foster center as she concocts one plan after another to help Meridee, culminating in an action-comedy climax that gives Pavi unexpected insight into her former foster parents' lives. VERDICT A fresh, feel-good story that will make readers cheer and appreciate the home and family they may take for granted.-Marybeth Kozikowski, Sachem Public Library, Holbrook, NY

School Library Journal

Narrator Ariana Cordero gives a fresh, youthful voice to precocious, straight-A foster kid Pavi Sharma in this feel-good story. Twelve-year-old Pavi is happy and thriving in her current foster family, but she hasn’t forgotten the struggles foster kids face. So she provides a package of services for fellow foster kids, researching their new families and schools in exchange for snacks and school supplies. When a girl named Meridee is placed in Pavi’s nightmarish former foster home, Pavi enlists an unlikely trio of middle schoolers, including her eighth-grade “client,” Santos; her foster brother, Hamilton; and his best friend, Piper, to help save Meridee. Cordero’s voice expertly reflects all the kids’ personalities: Pavi’s can-do confidence, Santos’s cool aloofness, Hamilton’s kind loyalty, and Piper’s whiny sense of entitlement. S.C. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2020 - AudioFile

Narrator Ariana Cordero gives a fresh, youthful voice to precocious, straight-A foster kid Pavi Sharma in this feel-good story. Twelve-year-old Pavi is happy and thriving in her current foster family, but she hasn’t forgotten the struggles foster kids face. So she provides a package of services for fellow foster kids, researching their new families and schools in exchange for snacks and school supplies. When a girl named Meridee is placed in Pavi’s nightmarish former foster home, Pavi enlists an unlikely trio of middle schoolers, including her eighth-grade “client,” Santos; her foster brother, Hamilton; and his best friend, Piper, to help save Meridee. Cordero’s voice expertly reflects all the kids’ personalities: Pavi’s can-do confidence, Santos’s cool aloofness, Hamilton’s kind loyalty, and Piper’s whiny sense of entitlement. S.C. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2020 - AudioFile

2019-07-28
Twelve-year-old Pavi Sharma, who has bounced from foster home to foster home, has become a small-business owner of sorts: For a fee (Hot Cheetos), she teaches other foster children what she has learned.

When she learns that 5-year-old Meridee is to be placed in Pavi's traumatic first foster home, she pulls together a ragtag gang—her foster mother's biological son, Hamilton; his best friend, Piper; and Santos, a formidable eighth grader who is also a foster child—in order to save Meridee from Pavi's fate. Pavi reads like a standard-issue plucky and quirky (she likes Cheetos and stationery) middle-grade heroine. She is Indian American, but she has no real connection to her cultural background even though she lived with her troubled, Hindi-speaking mother till she was 9. Indeed, Marjorie, Pavi's current foster mother, makes an effort to learn to make "Indian food," including a "few types of curries" and "treats like samosas and biryani," but Pavi is actively incurious. Whether this is due to trauma or not, the failure of the narrative to flesh out her background leaves readers with a flattened, generic sense of India and its cultures. The book includes a fun subplot involving Piper's YouTube beauty channel and Hamilton's participation in a goth makeup tutorial. But readers will want to know more about Pavi's past and her place in the world, beyond just being a foster child. Meridee and Santos are children of color, reflecting foster-child demographics, while Marjorie, Hamilton, and Piper are white.

In divorcing this protagonist of color from her background, this novel misses the mark. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews