Perfect Enough

Good Different #2

by Meg Eden Kuyatt

The companion novel to the beloved and award-winning Good Different.Selah is a dragon.Or at least, she feels like one. And she finally figured out how to spread her wings and soar.Armed with her sensory tools, her notebooks and poems, and her newfound knowledge about her autism, Selah is heading to writing camp for the summer. She's excited to work on her writing, perform at the final showcase, and to meet more kids like her.Things aren't so simple though. As soon as she arrives, she realizes that her bully from home is there too. Ezra is chaotic, attention-seeking, and always teasing her.Selah is determined not to let him ruin her summer. But soon it turns out that it's not just Ezra causing problems. . . . As kind and enthusiastic as Selah's new friends are, they don't fully understand her autism and how overwhelming this new environment is for her.Friend drama, classes, overstimulation, and her relationship with Ezra all start to feel like a lot. But surely Selah can make it through just a few weeks without reaching her breaking point again . . . right?

Genres: Middle Grade, Novel In Verse, Fiction, Disability, Autistic Spectrum Disorder

352 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication June 2, 2026

About the author

Meg Eden Kuyatt is a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee, and teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” (Press 53, 2020) and children’s novels, most recently “Good Different” (Scholastic, 2023). Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal and Instagram at @meden_author.

Reviews

[Ms. Yingling · Rating 3 out of 5]

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

In this sequel to Good Different, Selah is cautiously excited about attending a summer Writers' Camp at a university. She will be there with her long time friends Brooklyn and Rheya, but is concerned that she will become overwhelmed. This is something that can happen because she has autism, but she has some good coping strategies in place. Her mother is reluctant to let her go, but her grandfather, Pop, supports her. Selah worries that if she can't last a few weeks at camp, her mother will never let her do anything. She sets off with her tools like earplugs, fidgets, and sunglasses, and is excited to work on her poetry so that she can get a start on being a real writer. Her counselor, Noa, is understanding, since she also has autism and is in a wheelchair due to long COVID. Brooklyn and Rheya say that they don't want any drama during the summer, so Selah tries to not freak out, even when there are masses of ladybugs in the room. When Brooklyn and Rheya decide to do a film for their group project without consulting her, she's not happy, but tries to power through. A boy who has given her trouble back at her private Pebblecreek school, Ezra, is at the camp, but when the two are paired on a writing project, Selah finds that the two may have some things in common. Ezra has ADHD, which is what causes his exuberant behavior that irritates Selah. They find some common interests, and Selah finds it more calming to be with her than her friends sometimes, which irritates them. Brooklyn doesn't seem to really understand that Selah is sensitive to lights and noise, and Selah ends up trying to sleep in the dorm library because of the interference. When she mentions it to her roommates, Rheya seems to understand, but Brooklyn just laughs it off. This eventually causes Selah to call her mother and asks to come home. She ends up staying, but talks a lot to Noa about how she has to protect her health. This is especially important when everything becomes too much for her and she can't get out of bed. Selah talks to Pop, who lets her know that coming home doesn't mean that she can't ever succeed; it just means that she is overwhelmed right now. Brooklyn is upset because Selah hasn't been upfront with her, and claims that "real friends tell each other things". Brooklyn is, of course, having her own problems, and her parents aren't very attentive to her. Selah goes home, but has a new friendship with Ezra, a new understanding with her friends, and a new perspective in starting the upcoming school year and Old Mill Middle School.
Strengths: While many middle grade novels depict traditional outdoor summer camps, special interest camps at universities seem to be more prevalent today. There are certainly many camps for writing and computer programming, and spending time on a campus is an intriguing proposition for young readers. It was realistic to see the difficulties that Selah had with Brooklyn and Rheya; hanging out for a few hours is completely different than having to live with your friends 24/7! It was quite fascinating to see Selah and Ezra becoming friends and bonding over their neurodiverse brains, and it was good to explore how tweens might hate when people make assumptions about them even while they are making assumptions about others. The mother's overprotection was on point, and I was curious as to how Pop's was able to encourage Selah to listen to her mother while he was still driving despite some opposition. There might be another book possible detailing Selah's entrance into her new public middle school.
Weaknesses: While it is admirable that Selah wants to be a writer focusing on poetry, I would still like to see more books depicting tweens who are interested in careers that will be more in demand, such as STEM careers, child care, or math related occupations. I was a big fan of the 1950s career romances that encouraged girls to become physical therapists, nurses, copy editors, or librarians (which AT THE TIME was not a bad choice). It makes sense that authors are creating books about wanting to write, but it would be more useful to broaden the scope of jobs for tweens.
What I really think: This is a good choice for readers who enjoyed Hicks' Inbetweens, Montague's Camp Frenemies, or Fajardo's Miss Camper.

[Emily Bess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got this ARC through Scholastic and I’m really excited to put it into my middle school library! I’m a librarian with ADHD and I loved the way it teaches about neurodiversity in a way that makes sense. I also love a novel in verse!

[YSBR · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s summer vacation, and budding poet Selah is headed off to three weeks of Writers’ Camp.  It’s the first time she’s been away from her mother and grandfather (Pop), and her first big adventure since being diagnosed with autism in the spring of seventh grade.  Mom is apprehensive and Pop is cautiously optimistic - and both reassure Selah that there’s no shame in changing her mind if she wants to come home - but Selah is confident and excited.  She is rooming with Brooklyn and Rheya, two girls she met at a FantasyCon who share her love of dragons and creative expression.  On the first day of camp, she is startled to see her classmate and sometime nemesis Ezra in attendance as well, and plans to avoid him as best she can.  

In the beginning, Selah thrives in her new independent environment: she loves being with her friends, enjoys the challenge of the classes she’s taking, and even starts to warm up to Ezra, who confides in her that he has ADHD and considers them neurodivergent ‘brain cousins.’  An assignment for a group project leads to problems for the roommates as Brooklyn takes charge and doesn’t leave a lot of space for Selah’s ideas, and gets mad when Selah suggests she might work with Ezra instead.  On top of that, Brooklyn and Rheya tend to talk late into the night with the lights left on, inviting other girls in with no regard for Selah’s sensitivity to both noise and light.  Selah tries to tolerate it at first, knowing her friends don’t fully understand her autism and how it manifests for her.  She just wants to fit in, but the harder she tries to manage her situation without asking for help from a grownup, the bigger her reactions become.  She takes to sleeping in the library of her dorm, which leads to exhaustion and dysregulation as well as misunderstandings with her friends.  Her kind counselor and her mother and Pop encourage her to consider going home, but she is hesitant to let them - and herself - down by admitting what she sees as defeat.

Perfect Enough is a satisfying follow-up to Meg Eden Kuyatt’s debut novel, Good Different, which chronicles Selah’s seventh grade school year, in which she discovers her love of writing poetry and also receives her diagnosis of autism.  Like that book, the first-person narration is told in free verse poetry with an authentic voice that really enables the audience to access Selah’s feelings and mindset.  Readers will empathize with Selah as she navigates new experiences and social situations while learning to put her own needs and well-being at the top of her priority list.  This is challenging enough for any middle schooler, without the added stress of remembering the various coping strategies she has acquired from therapy and her own research, and trying to advocate for herself with her peers.  This summer is a real growth experience for Selah, who definitely needs to give herself a break as she prepares to go to public school for the first time in the fall.  Back matter includes writing prompts based on some of the camp activities, recommendations for reading manga, and resources for learning more about ADHD. Link to complete review: https://ysbookreviews.wordpress.com/2...

[this_eel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Meg Edan Kuyatt SO much. This is my third book by her, and her third kindhearted middle grade verse novel about an Autistic kid, and it's a very lovely follow-up to Good Different. Selah is figuring out what to do to make her life easier now that she has an Autism diagnosis to reframe some of her feelings and experiences. She is also at WRITING CAMP, away from home for several weeks, spending time with friends and honing her favorite craft. But away camp is actually super hard and so is friendship, so partway through, Selah is crashing. This is a book about really really really wanting something and needing to figure out the balance between your desires and your capacities. It is also about how sometimes your friends can be jerks and those jerks also have mental health problems. Broadly I think it's empathetic, sweet, effectively stressful and enjoyable. Nice book.

This is a whole soap box, but I have this backwards old suspicion sometimes that having supercodified language that, at last, explains and defines our experiences in some ways diminishes our ability to seek our own descriptions of those experiences. Diagnosis CAN save your life but maybe, also, groping for language is sometimes a beautiful thing. I just think about this when I run into a book where the experiences of, for example, Autism, are neatly labeled as per the glossary of a workbook rather than described in a way that I feel in my heart. This book doesn't do that so much that I didn't enjoy it, but it gets clinical in its language sometimes, and I don't think it will help an Autistic child more to hear about spoon theory in a novel than it would help that Autistic child to read about a character whose fresh telling of their self, using words not provided to them by a clinician, matches the reader's own impossible and familiar feelings. Walk around the block twice after therapy BEFORE setting out to write, is what I am saying here to all of us.

There was a stretch of the book where I was very uncertain whether Selah (or Kuyatt) would notice how messed up one of the friends who Selah struggles with is being / is feeling. But overall I think she pulls it off--"it" being both yet another compelling portrait of a child's Autistic experiences, and ensuring that other characters and not just her protagonist are complicated people with their own inner mental health and disability struggles.

I also appreciate, very much, Kuyatt's choice of message: not "it's summer and at the last second everyone will triumph" so much as "it's summer and maybe you are taking on a bit too much". I appreciate her willingness to make things...well, imperfect...in order to get there.

Overall, a very pleasant (if sometimes deliberately frustrating) reading experience that I strongly recommend to fans of Good Different, seekers of thoughtful stories about Autism, and readers of contemporary MG in general.

[Melanie Dulaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful follow-up to Selah’s story of self-discovery and the beginnings of understanding her autism in Good Different.

In Good Different, Selah, her mother and grandfather finally putting a name to why it has been so difficult for her to regulate emotions, handle loud noises and chaotic situations and express her wants and needs to others. With guidance from supportive friends, family and professionals, she completed 7th grade using a variety of tools that are beginning to help her navigate life’s challenges and all the things that neurotypical people may not have to think much about. Her poetry writing continues to be an outlet for her as both retreat and self-expression and thanks to new friends Brooklyn and Rheya, she is planning to attend a 3 week writing camp in order to fine tune her skills and possibly even be published. But the pressures of the schedule, projects to be completed, noisy teens who do not understand the concept of quiet time or lights and, maybe most especially, the presence of nemesis Ezra, may prove to be more than Selah can handle, even with her newfound skills.

Once again Meg Kuyatt gives readers an NIV that will validate the experiences of many neurodivergent thinkers and/or guide others to greater understanding of those who do not fit into the box that traditional expectations require. Using Ezra’s ADHD, Noa’s physical battles with long COVID complications, and Brooklyn’s struggle with being alone or in too much silence, the focus expands to include more personalities and unique sets of needs allowing more readers to make direct connections to the main characters. In the writer’s camp setting, there are plenty of positive reactions to the specific needs of Selah, Ezra and Brooklyn but there are also those who do not react well at all and plenty who fall somewhere in-between providing a very realistic backdrop of experiences. Love how Kuyatt uses Selah and others to demonstrate different ways to express one’s needs and to try and heal rifts between friends.

Perfect edition to the NIV collections in libraries serving grades 3-8 and highly recommended even if readers haven’t read Good Different.

Target age: grades 3-8
Profanity: none
Violence: none
Sexual content: none
Representation: Selah and Noa are autistic; Ezra has ADHD; Noa has difficulties with mobility; Brooklyn’s parents are often emotionally and physically absent from her life; the cover illustration only indicates Ezra is Black; Selah has a positive and supportive family with the unique configuration of mom, grandfather and child

Thanks for providing a print arc for an early look, Scholastic!

[Kathy MacMillan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This delightful sequel to Good Different follows Selah as she enters the brave new world of writing camp, armed with the autism diagnosis she received in the first book, and plenty of tools to help her manage sensory overwhelm. But a new environment and new friends come with lots of new challenges. Selah overcomes her negative previous impressions to become friends with Ezra, a boy from her old school. Even though they declare themselves “brain cousins” in neurodivergence, Selah soon realizes that her autism and Ezra’s ADHD express themselves in very different ways. Add to that the exciting (but sometimes overwhelming) experience of rooming with two new friends who share many of her interests but don’t understand her boundaries. (“Rumors say autistic people aren’t good at social cues,” she says, “but I don’t know where that came from because it seems to me that other people don’t get my obvious cues to leave me alone.”) The author shows Selah’s mounting frustrations with her friends and herself in lyrical verse that often incorporates the forms featured in her writing classes. (Take note, language arts teachers! This book has SO many lesson extension possibilities, many of which are included in writing prompts in the backmatter.) My favorite thing about this story is its refusal to tack on a pat happy ending; the story’s conclusion is satisfying and completely earned, and emphasizes that real progress comes in many different forms. For Selah that is about learning to answer the question: “How do you know what’s a good or bad uncomfortable? The kind that makes you grow or makes you melt down?”

[Laura P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect Enough is an endearing story told in verse about Selah, an autistic girl who is determined to prove she can handle the challenges of sleep-away camp. Late night noise, intense friendship dynamics, and the arrival of her nemesis are just a few of the challenges Selah faces. She attempts to use her strategies to overcome those challenges, but she's quickly overwhelmed by the environment, miscommunications, and the pressure she puts on her own self. Throughout the summer camp experience, Selah learns about working with and communicating with others, accepting others for who they are, and that she can settle for "perfect enough." I loved how Selah overcame differences in her relationships and found an unlikely ally. This book is a wonderful way for young readers to discover strategies for their own relationships in addition to acceptance of others' and their own limitations. Meg Eden Kuyatt's poetry is a captivating and relatable format for the story, as well as an accessible way for both seasoned and struggling readers to engage. Many thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

[Stephanie Erickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 12-year-old daughter read this book. Her review is below:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ x ∞

Perfect enough was really good!! We follow Selah as she goes to a sleepaway camp as a neurodivergent. She has trouble sleeping at night even though they are her best friends, they are loud and don't let her sleep. There is a project for camp that is displayed at the end where she and her friends are working together, but they pick an idea without her.

A kid from her school that wasn't that nice to her at school is befriended and has adhd. It was a good description of how autism and adhd are alike but different.

I loved how it described autism and adhd as brain cousins. Both true and fun. It showed how autism can be like a superpower but also hard. It showed how making and keeping friends can be difficult, especially as someone who is on the spectrum.

Selah also finds a neurodivergent camp counselor who is nice, helpful and is always there for Selah.

In all it was the perfect sequel to Good Enough. Everyone who is neurodivergent/thinks they might be should read this series!

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid companion novel in verse for middle grade readers who loved the first one!


“Could it be OK to be
strong but also tired?
A hero who can do great things
but also needs a lot of sleep?”


"Friends aren't always perfect allies."
She nods
to the cane beside her.
"Some things are hard
to understand
if you aren't living it."


“I’m too tired
to be brave.”


“A group of dragons is called
a thunder
or a flight.

Sometimes being with dragons
is like thunder-
heated
loud
a lot.
Sometimes words sting
under our scales
and make us feel
more monster than magic.

Sometimes words sting under our scales and make us feel more monster than magic.
But sometimes it's a flight-
for so long
I've tried to be
one dragon
alone,
which can be
exhausting,
but in a group,
we help each other
lighten each other's loads
so we keep
flying.”

[T. Mills]

I once again find myself being incredibly thankful for the writing of Meg Eden Kuyatt! I didn't know that Selah's story in Good Different needed a sequel until I held it in my hands! Selah's first story helped our then 7th grade daughter come to the understanding that she, too, is Autistic. She will to this day tell people "this book saved my life". Kuyatt continues to offer highly relatable portrayals of the experience of late diagnosed Autistic girls. This time, Selah had to navigate the complexities of summer camp, a new friendship with a previously misunderstood classmate and the challenges of Autistic burnout. I will be recommending this to people who want both windows and mirrors for neurodivergent experiences!

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review. Perfect Enough hits shelves June 2nd!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

After having read Good Different, I was so excited to see a sequel was available and have it be my first ARC through Net Galley! I loved the first book, so I knew I would love this one too.

The way Kuyatt conveys the autistic experience is unparalleled in middle grade fiction. I can't wait until my autistic son is a little bit older so he can read these books too and see such good autistic representation. The introduction of an ADHD character in Perfect Enough and watching Selah grapple with understanding someone whose brain is also different but in another way was a great addition. I loved the term "brain cousins" used to describe them.

I hope this isn't the last we'll see of Selah's story. As long as Kuyatt keeps writing them, I'll keep reading them!

[Laura Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book!!! Ezra’s depiction of ADHD rang very true for me as a mother of a kiddo with ADHD. I love how Selah is learning to advocate for herself and speak up with her friends. Many of the poems are quite beautiful as standalones. I also love how at the end of the book. Everything is not tied up in a neat bow. Selah learns that sometimes she needs to take it slow and back off from doing too much. What important lesson!

[ABC]

is this a second book for good different?
is good different a series now?!

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A poem is never perfect, but always growing until we decide it's fully bloomed." This is a fantastic companion to the hit middle grade novel-in-verse GOOD DIFFERENT. Now that Selah has an autism diagnosis, a better understanding of how her brain works, and a plan to thrive at school, this story follows her to a dream summer camp experience where she's writing poetry on a college campus. But with that opportunity and freedom comes new challenges like spending lots of time with people, the pressures to perform in a workshop environment, navigating friendships with no breaks, and even having to admit she may have mistaken a friend for an enemy. The book gives Selah the space and grace to explore all these issues in imperfect ways just like a kid would in real life. Meg Eden Kuyatt is such a talented poet, which all shines through the pages here, but I think her extraordinary gift is the fresh, open, and generous spirit she brings to how children can use the poetic form itself to fully experience their feelings in transformative and expansive ways. Highly recommend!

Original:
ARC read - loved it, fantastic companion to Good Different. Full review closer to publication date.