The Way to Bea by Kat Yeh Format: eARC
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers on September 19th 2017
Pages: 352
Goodreads
With a charming voice, winning characters, and a perfectly-woven plot, Kat Yeh delivers a powerful story of friendship and finding a path towards embracing yourself.
Everything in Bea's world has changed. She's starting seventh grade newly friendless and facing big changes at home, where she is about to go from only child to big sister. Feeling alone and adrift, and like her words don't deserve to be seen, Bea takes solace in writing haiku in invisible ink and hiding them in a secret spot.
But then something incredible happens--someone writes back. And Bea begins to connect with new friends, including a classmate obsessed with a nearby labyrinth and determined to get inside. As she decides where her next path will lead, she just might discover that her words--and herself--have found a new way to belong.
Before beginning my review I quickly want to thank Rockstar Book Tour for allowing me to be on this tour and to Little Brown for sending me an eArc of the book to read for my review.
If you are a reader of my blog you would have noticed that I spoke about this book briefly when I was wish listing the books I heard about that were going to be at BEA this year and The Way to BEA actually made my wishlist of books that I wanted to read when it came out so I was thrilled when I got the email from Rockstar Book Tour saying they were looking for tour host, you can best believe I quickly replied to be a part of the tour and I was thrilled when I got the confirmation that I was on the tour.
Kat Yeh has written two picture books and another middle grade novel that I will be checking out very soon because this one was really good and I enjoyed reading it.
As I was reading this I thought this would be the perfect book for kids to read just before going back to school especially grade seven like the main character Bea is as I think they could relate to her and the situation she is in.
Bea is a bright, inspiring 12 year old girl going into seventh grade and her and her BFF have made these amazing plans to be something this year and to shine, well things don’t go according to plan. Something that I am sure a lot of kids do the summer before grade seven. They want to be cool, liked and popular. I know I sure wanted to do that but then reality quickly sets in right?
Just before school starts Bea goes to Taiwan with her family and she comes home excited to see her friends only to realize her friends are no ignoring. She realizes she has no one to talk to because both her parents are busy with work. You can see her struggling and my heart broke for her.
Bea’s parents are both successful and involved with their work but they do love Bea. I just wish they would have taken a moment to see that she was struggling instead of being so into their work. One thing about Bea is that she is really good at hiding things and deflecting things so to her parents defence they didnt’ really notice anything unusual in Bea.
Its not easy being a girl going into grade seven with no friends, being ignored, because you are in a whole new playing field but I loved how as much as Bea was in pain she showed the readers that no matter what you can do it and over come this. I wish I had this book when I was going into grade seven. Bea was a strong and courageous girl in my opinion.