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Matasha
It’s 1970s Chicago. Eleven-year-old Matasha Wax is in the sixth grade and starting to experience the trials of growing up. Her parents are in a standoff over her mother’s desire to adopt a refugee child from Vietnam, and her best friend, Jean, is ignoring her. As she watches the other girls in school starting to grow inches and breasts, Matasha remains a puny four-foot-four—which means she will need growth hormone shots, and she is terrified of needles. Apart from her daily reading of the advice columns in the newspaper and keeping up with the Patty Hearst and Watergate scandals, Matasha is fixated by the story of a nine-year-old boy who has gone missing. When mysterious letters start arriving from Switzerland and her mother suddenly disappears, Matasha knows something else is terribly wrong—but no one will tell her what is happening, so she has to figure it all out for herself.
A tale of a girl growing up while her family grows apart, Matasha is a poignant look at resilience in the face of adolescent loneliness, divorce, bullying and slow development.
A tale of a girl growing up while her family grows apart, Matasha is a poignant look at resilience in the face of adolescent loneliness, divorce, bullying and slow development.
294 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2021
3 people are currently reading
129 people want to read
About the author
Pamela Erens
10 books153 followersPamela's fifth book, MIDDLEMARCH AND THE IMPERFECT LIFE, out April 2022, is part of Ig Publishing's Bookmarked series on books that have shaped an author's writing and life.
Her previous book, her first for children, was published in June 2021. MATASHA (igKids) is for readers ages 10 to 14. The novel received a starred Kirkus review, and Meg Wolitzer in the New York Times called it "thoroughly winning.... The many pleasures of this novel include its empathy and poker-faced wit, and the charms of its main character."
Apart from these, Pamela has published three novels for adults. The most recent, ELEVEN HOURS, was brought out by Tin House Books (US) and Atlantic Books (UK) in 2016 and by Keter (Israel) in 2017.
ELEVEN HOURS was named a Best Book of 2016 by NPR, The New Yorker, Kirkus, Literary Hub, Entropy, and the Irish Independent. It received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, and was lauded by publications ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to specialized literary sites such as Book Riot and The Millions.
Pamela's second novel, THE VIRGINS (Tin House, 2013), was a New York Times Book Review and Chicago Tribune Editors' Choice and was named a Best Book of 2013 by The New Yorker, The New Republic, Library Journal and Salon. The novel was a finalist for the John Gardner Book Award for the best book of fiction published in 2013.
A UK edition (John Murray) of THE VIRGINS appeared in 2014, and a German one C.H. Beck) in 2015.
In 2014, Tin House Books reissued Pamela's debut novel, THE UNDERSTORY (Ironweed Press, 2007), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.
Pamela is the recipient of 2015 fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Wesleyan Writers Conference, and a 2014 fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her short fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in a wide variety of literary, cultural, and mainstream publications, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, The Millions, The New York Times, Salon, Elle, Vogue, and O, the Oprah Magazine. For many years Pamela was an editor at Glamour magazine.
"Everyone who has the good fortune to pick up one of Erens' three novels becomes a fan. Whether writing about teenagers at boarding school (The Virgins), two mothers struggling together through labor (Eleven Hours), or a loner at the end of his tether (The Understory), Erens has a gift for making you want to spend time in her characters' company. Then you want to scout her other fans to discuss your good fortune of discovering her talents." — Reader's Digest, "23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now" (2020)
Her previous book, her first for children, was published in June 2021. MATASHA (igKids) is for readers ages 10 to 14. The novel received a starred Kirkus review, and Meg Wolitzer in the New York Times called it "thoroughly winning.... The many pleasures of this novel include its empathy and poker-faced wit, and the charms of its main character."
Apart from these, Pamela has published three novels for adults. The most recent, ELEVEN HOURS, was brought out by Tin House Books (US) and Atlantic Books (UK) in 2016 and by Keter (Israel) in 2017.
ELEVEN HOURS was named a Best Book of 2016 by NPR, The New Yorker, Kirkus, Literary Hub, Entropy, and the Irish Independent. It received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, and was lauded by publications ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to specialized literary sites such as Book Riot and The Millions.
Pamela's second novel, THE VIRGINS (Tin House, 2013), was a New York Times Book Review and Chicago Tribune Editors' Choice and was named a Best Book of 2013 by The New Yorker, The New Republic, Library Journal and Salon. The novel was a finalist for the John Gardner Book Award for the best book of fiction published in 2013.
A UK edition (John Murray) of THE VIRGINS appeared in 2014, and a German one C.H. Beck) in 2015.
In 2014, Tin House Books reissued Pamela's debut novel, THE UNDERSTORY (Ironweed Press, 2007), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.
Pamela is the recipient of 2015 fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Wesleyan Writers Conference, and a 2014 fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her short fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in a wide variety of literary, cultural, and mainstream publications, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, The Millions, The New York Times, Salon, Elle, Vogue, and O, the Oprah Magazine. For many years Pamela was an editor at Glamour magazine.
"Everyone who has the good fortune to pick up one of Erens' three novels becomes a fan. Whether writing about teenagers at boarding school (The Virgins), two mothers struggling together through labor (Eleven Hours), or a loner at the end of his tether (The Understory), Erens has a gift for making you want to spend time in her characters' company. Then you want to scout her other fans to discuss your good fortune of discovering her talents." — Reader's Digest, "23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now" (2020)
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 18, 2021
I don't read a lot of fiction and I don't remember where I had read about this book, but it was on the top of one of my stacks of to-read books and I picked it up thinking I'd read just a bit of it. I couldn't stop reading and I am still thinking about the characters and wishing the story would continue. I want to know what happens next in Matasha's life. I think that may be the mark of a good book, don't you? The book is quirky. Being about an eleven-year-old girl, you might assume it is middle-grade fiction, but some of the story line is more mature and may be better considered a YA book. It certainly has plenty to engage an adult reader, so maybe it is an anybody book. It is simply a very good read. I had not read anything else by this author, but I now plan to seek out her other books.
June 24, 2021
“'We’ve made up a list of everything we think is wrong with you and everything we think is right with you. Do you want to hear it?'
"Matasha sat down on the floor. She didn’t know quite what to say.
"'Which is longer?' she asked.
"Jean and Tamar looked at each other.
"'The things that are wrong with you,' Jean replied."
I have no idea how I, a middle-aged male who generally gravitates to hardboiled crime fiction, found my way to this middle-grade novel about a preteen girl (probably the fact that it was set in the 1970s, at a time I was Matasha's age). But, who cares? I'm just glad I made this discovery, because MATASHA may be the best novel I've read all year, and I read a lot.
Matasha, an only child of a well-off Chicago couple (her eccentric mother, with shades of Rose Weissman on THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, decided the M would be more interesting than the N), is eleven going on twelve, and wading through the usual thickets of that age. She's on the cusp of puberty, only she may not be — at four-foot-four and sixty pounds, her parents are concerned that her growth might be stunted. She's got on best friend, but in the ways that children of that age grow at different speeds an leave each other behind, Matasha not only loses Jean but sees Jean viciously turn on her, isolating Matasha from almost everyone else at school. And then there's the neighborhood kid who mysteriously disappeared; Matasha is convinced that his bones will be found in the dirt on the construction site of her new school. Oh, and her mother leaves one day and doesn't come back.
All of this is handled not just with heart, humor and effortlessly professional storycraft, but with a good clear eye for the private pain of peer cruelties. (Maybe because I might have been a bit of a Matasha myself back then.) It's hard to explain; I just loved this novel, hard, and maybe that's really all there is to say about it. Matasha has a Messy dDawer for things she can't quite wrap her head around in the moment; maybe my review belongs in ,y own Messy Drawer. It's hard to talk about things you feel much more than you can articulate.
So maybe it's best to let author Pamela Erens have the final word. Because, basically, my review of MATASHA is this: If you love the following passages, you'll love the book.
"There were times when she felt that other kids had access to some sort of rule book that no one had shared with her. They seemed to know intuitively that there were certain things that were not nice to talk about, not nice to do. So that Matasha, who blithely assumed that anything was fair game for conversation, and that it was all right to do just about anything that didn’t hurt someone else, would be brought up short and made to know that she had broken one of those rules yet again."
"There were two problems with the idea of synchronized swim. One was that Matasha was physically lazy. The thing she most liked to do after school was go home and sit in the kitchen and read while spooning peanut butter out of the jar. Or else lie on the carpet in her room listening to her Beatles records and working on the novel she was writing, which was about a family just before and after the Great Chicago Fire."
"Matasha was immensely proud of having such a beautiful mother, one whom people stopped in the street to ask if she was the film actress Jacqueline Bisset. When Mr. and Mrs. Wax’s friends asked Matasha if she planned to be as beautiful as her mother someday, she mumbled that she didn’t know. The truth was she didn’t think so. No one ever went out of their way to tell her she was pretty, so she probably wasn’t. And the hairy legs, along with being inexplicably tiny, were tip-offs that beauty was not her destiny."
"She did not want to be famous, exactly. When you were famous, bad things happened to you. You got kidnapped, like Patty Hearst or that billionaire’s grandson who got his ear cut off. Or you got shot at, like President Ford. But it would be nice to be on TV, talking to people like Johnny Carson and having people read your stories."
"At home, Matasha found herself thinking of Jean whenever she played the Beatles, so she turned more and more to other music, music she learned about when she bought herself a couple of issues of Rolling Stone magazine. There was Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Paul Simon’s Still Crazy after All These Years and Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Live! She bought these one by one at Fat Sammy’s over on Clark Street and listened over and over to their unfamiliar, entrancing sounds."
"Matasha got it. Dr. Daisey was trying to say that you never knew how things would turn out. Everything that was awful now might lead to something good later, something better than if the misfortune had never happened. Matasha couldn’t deny that this was possible, but it also seemed like the kind of thing that grown-ups were dying to tell you when you were upset. That way they didn’t have to think too hard about the truth, which was that things were absolutely horrible for you right now, that you needed change right away and not at some maybe-time in the future."
"Matasha sat down on the floor. She didn’t know quite what to say.
"'Which is longer?' she asked.
"Jean and Tamar looked at each other.
"'The things that are wrong with you,' Jean replied."
I have no idea how I, a middle-aged male who generally gravitates to hardboiled crime fiction, found my way to this middle-grade novel about a preteen girl (probably the fact that it was set in the 1970s, at a time I was Matasha's age). But, who cares? I'm just glad I made this discovery, because MATASHA may be the best novel I've read all year, and I read a lot.
Matasha, an only child of a well-off Chicago couple (her eccentric mother, with shades of Rose Weissman on THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, decided the M would be more interesting than the N), is eleven going on twelve, and wading through the usual thickets of that age. She's on the cusp of puberty, only she may not be — at four-foot-four and sixty pounds, her parents are concerned that her growth might be stunted. She's got on best friend, but in the ways that children of that age grow at different speeds an leave each other behind, Matasha not only loses Jean but sees Jean viciously turn on her, isolating Matasha from almost everyone else at school. And then there's the neighborhood kid who mysteriously disappeared; Matasha is convinced that his bones will be found in the dirt on the construction site of her new school. Oh, and her mother leaves one day and doesn't come back.
All of this is handled not just with heart, humor and effortlessly professional storycraft, but with a good clear eye for the private pain of peer cruelties. (Maybe because I might have been a bit of a Matasha myself back then.) It's hard to explain; I just loved this novel, hard, and maybe that's really all there is to say about it. Matasha has a Messy dDawer for things she can't quite wrap her head around in the moment; maybe my review belongs in ,y own Messy Drawer. It's hard to talk about things you feel much more than you can articulate.
So maybe it's best to let author Pamela Erens have the final word. Because, basically, my review of MATASHA is this: If you love the following passages, you'll love the book.
"There were times when she felt that other kids had access to some sort of rule book that no one had shared with her. They seemed to know intuitively that there were certain things that were not nice to talk about, not nice to do. So that Matasha, who blithely assumed that anything was fair game for conversation, and that it was all right to do just about anything that didn’t hurt someone else, would be brought up short and made to know that she had broken one of those rules yet again."
"There were two problems with the idea of synchronized swim. One was that Matasha was physically lazy. The thing she most liked to do after school was go home and sit in the kitchen and read while spooning peanut butter out of the jar. Or else lie on the carpet in her room listening to her Beatles records and working on the novel she was writing, which was about a family just before and after the Great Chicago Fire."
"Matasha was immensely proud of having such a beautiful mother, one whom people stopped in the street to ask if she was the film actress Jacqueline Bisset. When Mr. and Mrs. Wax’s friends asked Matasha if she planned to be as beautiful as her mother someday, she mumbled that she didn’t know. The truth was she didn’t think so. No one ever went out of their way to tell her she was pretty, so she probably wasn’t. And the hairy legs, along with being inexplicably tiny, were tip-offs that beauty was not her destiny."
"She did not want to be famous, exactly. When you were famous, bad things happened to you. You got kidnapped, like Patty Hearst or that billionaire’s grandson who got his ear cut off. Or you got shot at, like President Ford. But it would be nice to be on TV, talking to people like Johnny Carson and having people read your stories."
"At home, Matasha found herself thinking of Jean whenever she played the Beatles, so she turned more and more to other music, music she learned about when she bought herself a couple of issues of Rolling Stone magazine. There was Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Paul Simon’s Still Crazy after All These Years and Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Live! She bought these one by one at Fat Sammy’s over on Clark Street and listened over and over to their unfamiliar, entrancing sounds."
"Matasha got it. Dr. Daisey was trying to say that you never knew how things would turn out. Everything that was awful now might lead to something good later, something better than if the misfortune had never happened. Matasha couldn’t deny that this was possible, but it also seemed like the kind of thing that grown-ups were dying to tell you when you were upset. That way they didn’t have to think too hard about the truth, which was that things were absolutely horrible for you right now, that you needed change right away and not at some maybe-time in the future."
June 19, 2021
My friend Pamela’s fourth novel — her first YA. I’m very impressed by how deftly and completely she was able to inhabit her 11-year-old protagonist — the way she thinks and feels about the small details of life as well some pretty big challenges. So well done.
April 12, 2021
I thought Matasha was a plucky kid. I loved how she dealt with bullies and how she questioned the criticism of her. I wish I'd had that much gumption at her age. I thought the author made her a very believable character. I loved the time period of the 1970s and all the references. It was refreshing to read a book that didn't Include modern technology. I was bothered by her negligence for one of her pets. I think modern kids can definitely relate to the themes in the story. Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the advance read.
September 9, 2024
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Matasha Wax lives with her parents in an apartment in mid-1970s Chicago. Her father is always working, and her mother is very busy with her volunteer work. They have a maid, Sunset, who used to be a nun and now lives in and takes care of the family. Matasha goes to a private school and struggles with her friends. She's very short for 6th grade, and her mother has her assessed and put on hormone shots. The mother is not happy, and has an idea to adopt a Vietnamese orphan. She even has the agency come over to interview the family, but the father is completely against the idea, since the mother tends to be flighty and give up on projects. Matasha likes the idea at first, but when a photograph of the first match looks "mean", and she finds out that she will have to trade her canopy bed for a bunk bed, she's less than thrilled. She finds out why her mother is so unhappy by snooping in her papers-- she's been corresponding with a man in Switzerland who wants the mother and Matasha to come and live with him. When the mother leaves, Matasha is worried, although her father is not. When the truth comes out that the mother has indeed gone to live in Switzerland, Matasha has to deal with the social fall out and find a way to be a family with just her father.
Strengths: This had a lot of great period details; gold lame shoes, casual parenting, mentions of current events like the Watergate scandal, Patty Hearst, and Vietnamese refugees, and a interesting look at living in an apartment in Chicago. I can't think of any other middle grade book that addresses the issue of short stature aside from Sloan's Short, and it is a topic that affects middle school students. My brother was on hormone therapy because he entered high school at 4'10". The parents' fraught relationship and the mother's leaving put me in mind of another 1970s novel, Kalmar's Stealing Mt. Rushmore. Matasha's obsession with a local boy who had gone missing seems to fit in with the concerns of this time.
Weaknesses: The cavalier treatment of the bunny, who was kept in a cage on the fire escape and whom Matasha frequently forgot to feed, was rather disturbing. At least she took better care of the cat that she got from a friend.
What I really think: This was interesting, but read a bit more like an adult book than a middle grade one.
Matasha Wax lives with her parents in an apartment in mid-1970s Chicago. Her father is always working, and her mother is very busy with her volunteer work. They have a maid, Sunset, who used to be a nun and now lives in and takes care of the family. Matasha goes to a private school and struggles with her friends. She's very short for 6th grade, and her mother has her assessed and put on hormone shots. The mother is not happy, and has an idea to adopt a Vietnamese orphan. She even has the agency come over to interview the family, but the father is completely against the idea, since the mother tends to be flighty and give up on projects. Matasha likes the idea at first, but when a photograph of the first match looks "mean", and she finds out that she will have to trade her canopy bed for a bunk bed, she's less than thrilled. She finds out why her mother is so unhappy by snooping in her papers-- she's been corresponding with a man in Switzerland who wants the mother and Matasha to come and live with him. When the mother leaves, Matasha is worried, although her father is not. When the truth comes out that the mother has indeed gone to live in Switzerland, Matasha has to deal with the social fall out and find a way to be a family with just her father.
Strengths: This had a lot of great period details; gold lame shoes, casual parenting, mentions of current events like the Watergate scandal, Patty Hearst, and Vietnamese refugees, and a interesting look at living in an apartment in Chicago. I can't think of any other middle grade book that addresses the issue of short stature aside from Sloan's Short, and it is a topic that affects middle school students. My brother was on hormone therapy because he entered high school at 4'10". The parents' fraught relationship and the mother's leaving put me in mind of another 1970s novel, Kalmar's Stealing Mt. Rushmore. Matasha's obsession with a local boy who had gone missing seems to fit in with the concerns of this time.
Weaknesses: The cavalier treatment of the bunny, who was kept in a cage on the fire escape and whom Matasha frequently forgot to feed, was rather disturbing. At least she took better care of the cat that she got from a friend.
What I really think: This was interesting, but read a bit more like an adult book than a middle grade one.
November 6, 2021
You might say that upper middle class white girls are hardly under-representated in middle school fiction, but I don't recall a character like Matasha: good at school, smart without being nerdy or particularly bookish, aware enough to know this socially isolates her but never even once thinking she should dumb herself down as a result. And, most particularly, bad at art. I related to Matasha about all these things, but the last the most: the leaves that whatever you do don't actually look like leaves, the house with the quartered window and the spaghetti-noodle driveway. Matasha is a wonderfully drawn, fully realized character.
The other main character is '70s Chicago, and Erens evokes it beautifully without being too pushy abut it. The pay-phones, the weird themed parties, the seismic changes in gender roles, these all inform the narrative without hijacking it. Most of all, in a way that could be universal but feels very '70s to me, the way parents confuse precocity with maturity, and share things with Matasha that she's in no way emotionally ready to handle. Erens touchingly depicts Matasha struggling to come to terms with it all.
The book reads middle-reader to me, with its short declarative sentences -- effectively mirroring the way Matasha processes the world -- and metaphors (like the under-construction building growing alongside Matasha growing) that are a bit more obvious than may be but still never oversold. The supporting characters are complex enough that there's something even for those of us who might relate to the over-30 characters the most. I look forward to reading this one again.
The other main character is '70s Chicago, and Erens evokes it beautifully without being too pushy abut it. The pay-phones, the weird themed parties, the seismic changes in gender roles, these all inform the narrative without hijacking it. Most of all, in a way that could be universal but feels very '70s to me, the way parents confuse precocity with maturity, and share things with Matasha that she's in no way emotionally ready to handle. Erens touchingly depicts Matasha struggling to come to terms with it all.
The book reads middle-reader to me, with its short declarative sentences -- effectively mirroring the way Matasha processes the world -- and metaphors (like the under-construction building growing alongside Matasha growing) that are a bit more obvious than may be but still never oversold. The supporting characters are complex enough that there's something even for those of us who might relate to the over-30 characters the most. I look forward to reading this one again.
January 10, 2022
I loved this book. I loved the wit and sophistication of the language, the genuineness of the characters, the intricacy of the plotting, the granular depiction of 1970’s Chicago. I loved Matasha, who is smart, honest, and charmingly morbid.
But I wonder: is this a book for kids? It’s about an eleven-year-old, but is it FOR eleven-year olds? I can even pinpoint that moment when the question occurred to me: on p. 51, when Matasha and her best friend Jean visit Matasha’s rabbit, which has been exiled by her parents to the fire escape of their upscale Chicago apartment. “The problem was . . . Matasha often forgot about him. Two or three days would go by and something would make her remember, and she would be pierced with guilt that he hadn’t been fed or visited.” This is awful, right? And Mr. Bunny is not unlike Matasha herself, who is neglected by an unhappy mother and a work-absorbed father and even treated cruelly by Jean. Afraid of needles, Matasha has to inject herself with growth hormones: for this kid, growing up is terrifying and painful, literally.
I can imagine kids being upset by this book. But I applaud Pamela Erens for writing a book both funny and clear-eyed, sad and at least a little bit hopeful. There may be no happy endings, but not all endings are bad, either. Matasha may not have an easy life, but she’s going to make it.
But I wonder: is this a book for kids? It’s about an eleven-year-old, but is it FOR eleven-year olds? I can even pinpoint that moment when the question occurred to me: on p. 51, when Matasha and her best friend Jean visit Matasha’s rabbit, which has been exiled by her parents to the fire escape of their upscale Chicago apartment. “The problem was . . . Matasha often forgot about him. Two or three days would go by and something would make her remember, and she would be pierced with guilt that he hadn’t been fed or visited.” This is awful, right? And Mr. Bunny is not unlike Matasha herself, who is neglected by an unhappy mother and a work-absorbed father and even treated cruelly by Jean. Afraid of needles, Matasha has to inject herself with growth hormones: for this kid, growing up is terrifying and painful, literally.
I can imagine kids being upset by this book. But I applaud Pamela Erens for writing a book both funny and clear-eyed, sad and at least a little bit hopeful. There may be no happy endings, but not all endings are bad, either. Matasha may not have an easy life, but she’s going to make it.
September 21, 2022
I feel like this is reminiscent of those coming of age books such as It's Me Margaret, Anastasia Krupnik, and The Agonies of Alice, in the best way. I'm not sure if it's 4 stars, but it's definitely more than 3. I haven't been captivated by a character in a long time, especially not in books from the past decade. The fact that the setting is in the 70's works in the story's favor, and the setting and writing for it feel genuine, not forced. I would like to see more of Matasha. I appreciated that not everything was magically solved at the end of the story, but I wasn't such a fan of how quickly the things that WERE fixed were resolved.
Still throughout the book, I related so well to Matasha, and I think other readers will too. I was a bit surprised towards the end when it suddenly got a bit PG-13 with some instances of strong language, which I think for 11 year old characters shouldn't have flown, especially not just in the last quarter of the book, when there had been no such language before. Not consistent.
But overall, I think this is a good coming of age story, and I would be interested in reading more books about Matasha.
Still throughout the book, I related so well to Matasha, and I think other readers will too. I was a bit surprised towards the end when it suddenly got a bit PG-13 with some instances of strong language, which I think for 11 year old characters shouldn't have flown, especially not just in the last quarter of the book, when there had been no such language before. Not consistent.
But overall, I think this is a good coming of age story, and I would be interested in reading more books about Matasha.
July 16, 2021
Eleven-year-old Matasha, the only child of a preoccupied father and an unpredictable mother, navigates the confusing world of adults, and the just as inexplicable world of childhood, with spunk and courage.
First her best friend, Jean, dumps Matasha after an adventure gone awry. Then Matasha, who has a terror of needles, has to start taking growth hormones. As if this is not enough, her parents cannot agree on whether or not to adopt a sister for Matasha from Vietnam. When Matasha’s mother disappears unexpectedly, Matasha’s world threatens to fall apart. But just when all seems lost, a surprising new friend, and a kitten named Peanuts, comes into Matasha’s life. With insight and resilience, she discovers a strength she didn’t know she had.
Rich in 1970 Chicago detail, and written with sensitivity and a deft, witty touch, Matasha is a delightful coming-of-age story about an unforgettable heroine. Erens’ latest is sure to captivate readers of all ages.
First her best friend, Jean, dumps Matasha after an adventure gone awry. Then Matasha, who has a terror of needles, has to start taking growth hormones. As if this is not enough, her parents cannot agree on whether or not to adopt a sister for Matasha from Vietnam. When Matasha’s mother disappears unexpectedly, Matasha’s world threatens to fall apart. But just when all seems lost, a surprising new friend, and a kitten named Peanuts, comes into Matasha’s life. With insight and resilience, she discovers a strength she didn’t know she had.
Rich in 1970 Chicago detail, and written with sensitivity and a deft, witty touch, Matasha is a delightful coming-of-age story about an unforgettable heroine. Erens’ latest is sure to captivate readers of all ages.
December 21, 2021
Not everyone will like this thought-provoking, quirky novel about an 11-year old girl whose best friend is seemingly dumping her, parents that are off in their own worlds, body that is not growing like other children's, yet it is unlike any book I've read; a rare gem for kids and adults alike. Not for readers seeking fast action, this quietly intriguing story held me captive until the end. An interesting read and a great choice for a mother/father-daughter book club. Highly recommended.
January 11, 2022
This is a middle grade book that I read for the bookclub with my niece. I thought it was a very realistic story that was written with a slice of life sensibility. I appreciated that, like life, not everything gets resolved and tied up with a bow. I loved the Chicago setting and thought Matasha was a very appealing character. I liked it enough that I’m going to read Erens adult books.
November 12, 2023
A great middle-grade book about a wonderfully quirky girl trying to navigate the ups and downs of friendship, bullying, medical issues, and a family in upheaval. Matasha is a fully drawn character with wit and charm, but she also has blind spots that Erens is not afraid to show. As an adult I appreciated the writing and kids will enjoy Matasha's journey through 6th grade.
April 9, 2025
I don't know why this book is considered "juvenile fiction," as it is missing the preachiness found in so many juvenile books. My library also affixed a sticker: "historical fiction" - !! It is set during 1975-1976, so maybe that's why it's "historical" - ? I really liked the book. It's perfect for old people like me, who remember the 1970s...
August 16, 2021
Wonderful book for young readers (ages 10-14 or so), more introspective and thought-provoking than most books designed for that age, with several twists and turns that caused me to reflect deeply on the characters' motivations. Highly recommend for adults as well!
October 16, 2021
This is a YA book that does not talk down to the reader. Talks about some serious subjects. Not a feel good book but you appreciate the author’s navigation of a 12 year old’s life. I highly recommend to this age group plus to adults.
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September 12, 2021A coming of age story with a memorable middle-school narrator. I loved that it takes children seriously, like they take themselves.
September 13, 2021
A quirky story that spoke to me in parts. It wasn't quite what I expected, but I finished it and am glad to have spent time with these characters.
October 18, 2021
I loved the originality and complexity of the characters in this story, as well as the plot. Everything about this book felt fresh.
May 24, 2022
This book is aimed at young adults, but its themes will also resonate with an adult audience.
Matasha has to deal with a range of problems over the course of the novel - her delayed growth, her in many ways unusual family life, being mobbed. I very much appreciated that the book offers no cheap solutions. While it is honest, it is also hopeful.
As for Matasha she is a wonderfully unique heroine. I loved her active imagination, her logical mind and her courage.
Matasha has to deal with a range of problems over the course of the novel - her delayed growth, her in many ways unusual family life, being mobbed. I very much appreciated that the book offers no cheap solutions. While it is honest, it is also hopeful.
As for Matasha she is a wonderfully unique heroine. I loved her active imagination, her logical mind and her courage.
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