Published November 2021
★★
Lottie is super excited to move up to Level 8 gymnastics—until she's more or less shut out by her teammates and struggles to find her footing on the beam.
I'm temporarily diving back into Kindle Unlimited, and I thought I'd ease into things with some good old middle grade. This one has some clear lessons to it (Be Nice to Mean Girls, Even When They're Mean to You, Because Hurt People Hurt People), and it's a very short read (read 90% of it on the way to and from the grocery), but I can't really recommend it even for the target audience. Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think that books for younger readers should have a firm grasp of grammar and syntax—kids absorb things. The amount of tense shifting in Lottie's Luck on Beam was enough to give me a headache...and that's even before getting to the punctuation, the awkward dialogue (what tweenager in Colorado says "she reckons the coaches were awful" (7)?), and the typos and/or awkward word choices (As I looked right I sore Tasha (5); "Yup," I muffle back" (13)). I actually think that's a fun use of "muffle," but you'd be hard pressed to convince me that it's intentional.
I have a soft spot for light gymnastics books, and I'll probably read more along these lines before I tap out, but I'd recommend looking elsewhere.
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