Maybe He Just Likes You - Barbara Dee

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Barbara Dee explores the subject of #MeToo for the middle grade audience in this heart-wrenching - and ultimately uplifting - novel about experiencing harassment and unwanted attention from classmates.

For seventh-grader Mila, it starts with some boys giving her an unwanted hug on the school blacktop. A few days later, one of the boys, Leo, tells Mila it's his birthday and and asks for a birthday hug. He's just being friendly, isn't he? And how can she say no? But Leo's hug lasts a few seconds too long and feels...weird. According to her friend, Mila is being immature and overreacting. Doesn't she know what flirting looks like?

But the boys don't leave Mila alone. On the bus. In the halls. During band practice - the one place Mila could always escape. It doesn't feel like flirting - so what is it? Thanks to a chance meeting, Mila begins to find solace in a new place: karate class. Slowly, with the help of a fellow classmate, Mila learns how to stand her ground and how to respect others - and herself.

From the author of Everything I Know About You, Halfway Normal, and Star-Crossed comes this timely story of a middle school girl standing up and finding her voice."

I put this ebook on hold as soon as I heard about it, and WHEW am I glad I did. My difficulty focusing on reading material is well-documented at this point, but let me tell you, I sat down to read this and ended up finishing the entire thing in one sitting. The description from the cover ends by calling this a timely story, but I have to say, whenever this book had come out, it would have been timely. Books about women, especially young women, dealing with sexual harassment are always timely. Maybe that will change in the future (I fucking HOPE that will change in the future!), but my god, I wish there had been a book like this to read when I was in seventh grade. Really, truly, this should be required reading - for middle school students, for teachers, for librarians, for any adult who interacts with young people, for any men who interact with people who are not men...basically for everyone on the face of the earth. Books like this are so important.

"Why is that, Dewey? What makes this book so special?"

I'm glad you asked!

Firstly, and probably most importantly, because it gives young people the language to not only recognize harassment but also to label it. While all this weird stuff is happening to Mila, she knows it makes her uncomfortable, and even when some of her friends downplay its seriousness, she understands that it's wrong because it makes her feel wrong. But she doesn't know how to name it, and that causes a lot of problems for her, both in communicating with her friends and in knowing if or how she should talk to an adult about it. As much as we might want to believe that seventh grade (or sixth grade...or fifth grade...or fourth grade...) is too young to talk about this stuff, shit happens, and kids need to be empowered with the vocabulary to speak out and stand up for themselves or their friends when they experience things like this. It's also super important that they know that something doesn't have to be HUGE to be sexual harassment...if it's unwanted and makes you uncomfortable, it qualifies. There is no metric it is required to meet.

Mila's experience also highlights the importance of being an ally. This can happen in all different ways - encouraging your friend to talk to someone, like Mila did with Max the year before and Max does for Mila now, speaking up when you see something happening that you disagree with, or making sure that you are there to offer support when you know a friend needs it - but whatever your allyship looks like, it's necessary, and it helps. Believe people when they say they are being harassed.

Another thing we see throughout Mila's story is the importance of young people having trusted adults that they can talk to. Mila's mom obviously loves and cares about her, but she has a lot going on, and even if she didn't, I think we all know that kids don't always feel comfortable going to their parents when they have things going on. Unfortunately, she's still pretty new to the seventh grade, the guidance counselor she felt comfortable talking to has just gone on maternity leave, and there isn't anyone else that she trusts to listen and understand what she is dealing with. That's why I think it's so important for adults who work with kids to read this book...to remind us that we need to do our best to be that person for the kids we work with, so they don't have to keep shit like this to themselves. I know it meant the world to me when I was in junior high and had teachers I could rely on, and I also felt that absence when I didn't. Having a trusted adult in their lives has a measurable positive impact on young people.

Finally, (be warned, here there be spoilers) something the book touches on that is very close to my heart is restorative justice. I read a few different reviews that talk about the too-perfect ending because in the *real world* the boys wouldn't have just stopped being jerks after one conversation. And in fairness, maybe they wouldn't have. We never know. But for anyone who feels it was too Disney-esque an ending, I'd like to invite them to consider that perhaps what the boys said was true, and they really didn't realize that what they were doing was so wrong. After all, how often do we hear "boys will be boys" or, as our title suggests, "maybe he just likes you" in reference to shitty behavior from young men? If someone is constantly getting a pass and having their behavior excused, when do they learn that behavior is wrong?

That is why I love that Barbara Dee resolved the conflict by having Mila's band teacher and two of the guidance counselors hold a version of a restorative justice circle with the involved students, rather than just doling out punitive justice like suspension or expulsion. After all, what would have happened if they had been suspended? They might have spent their time out of school thinking about Mila and realizing that what they had been doing was wrong...or they might have just been pissed that they got in trouble, blamed Mila, and been even worse to her when they came back. Punitive justice is great for telling people they did something wrong and they need to pay a penance for it, but it doesn't do much to improve behavior or allow for growth. By giving the boys involved an opportunity to talk things out, not only were they able to confront how their actions affect other people and learn from what had been happening, but Mila was also given an opportunity to begin to heal from what she had experienced. I'm not saying there aren't instances where punitive justice needs to take place, but I wish more organizations defaulted to restorative justice first. And for that matter, imagine how different this story might have been if the Vice Principal had taken a restorative approach when Mila kicked what's-his name. Restorative Justice forever!

Alright, alright, this is getting super long, and I know I already said "finally" but one last thing I have to bring up is how much I love that part of what helps Mila is karate. HELL YES to strong girls and women! Hell yes to Mila falling in love with karate!