I just finished #tuneitout by @jamiesumner_author and LOVED it! This is a must have for your middle school library (actually, I think 4th & 5th graders would like it too). I don’t want to give away spoilers, but Lou deals with an unseen diagnosis that can literally stop her dead in her tracks. Along her journey, she meets people that love and care about her enough to help her learn to work through the difficulties. This book is full of moments that are inspiring and I would like to see a follow up book maybe focused on Maxwell. I know this music loving, Broadway obsessed middle school Librarian would love it.

Thank you @netgalley & @simonandschuster for the eARC of this book. #schoollibrarian #middleschool

This review is on my Instagram- @mrsbrownslibrary and on my GoodReads account.

Lou lives with her mom, in a truck at Lake Tahoe. Lou also has problems with touch and loud noises but she sings like a song bird. Mom has her sing to crowds (even though Lou doesn’t like them.) When an agent sees her perform, he wants to represent her.
The night before leaving for LA to see the agent, Lou is in an accident. The police get involved and the bring in CPS. Lou is the separated from her mom and has to go on an airplane (the noise and crowds!) to live with her aunt she hadn’t seen since she was little. It’s there that Lou’s life starts to get normal.
Opinion
I wish I could give this book more than five stars. I truly and absolutely loved it. There is no part of this book that was not good.
The best parts are: 1. How Lou grows throughout the book 2. The incredible friend she’s found in Well, who has his own set of issues 3. The way Lou learns to trust while living with Aunt Ginger and Uncle Dan.
This book helps children who have different abilities see that they, too, can be normal. It also helps “normal” kids see different ability kids as normal. This book needs to be read.
Many thanks to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC of this book.

Lou is a great character! We need to see more characters struggle with disorders like Lou’s to hep kids relate to and/or build empath for. Join Lou on her journey to find her inner strength that so many others can already see in her.

There aren't many books that I would insist that everyone should read, but this is one of two. There are plenty of people out there who can write books, but Jamie Sumner manages to expertly weave in themes as varied as poverty, disability, middle school, tiger moms, moving, theatre, and child abuse together with relatable characters, a compelling storyline and understandable circumstances. Each chapter left me craving more as I felt the complex emotions of a girl trying to do her best in a world that seems just a bit harder than it should be.

While I'd recommend this book to anyone, I especially would like to see it in the hands of middle schoolers everywhere. Sumner treats her characters with respect and dignity as she explores difficult issues and finds a way to inspire acceptance and hope. I admit there are a lot of books that teachers pick out as impactful and hope their students will love. This one might require a gentle heart or a mature thought process to appreciate fully, but it's just the right kind of exposure to help open a child's mind to how to be more accepting and compassionate. I will be purchasing several copies to share. This book is now on my top 10 must read books of all time, and I have a feeling it will stay there for a long time.

Shoutout to Scott for creating Lou's Survival Playlist on Spotify already, as this is the perfect soundtrack to the final chapters.

* Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for a digital ARC of this title. All opinions are my own.

I couldn't put this book down. I was drawn to Lou's story and her character. Louise is a young girl with undiagnosed Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). Her mother is a piece of work who is trying to get Lou a career in the music business even though Lou really hates performing. They are homeless, live in their truck, and Lou hasn't gone to school since one school thought she might be on the spectrum. Then a truck accident changes everything.

Lou is taken away from her mother and sent to live with an aunt and uncle she doesn't know. She misses her mom and life has been completely flipped on its head. Rather than being homeless, she is in a comfortable home and attending a private school. She makes a friend even before starting. But she does meet with a counselor on the first day who does suspect that she has SPD. It takes a long time to work through it, but having a team to support her is a welcome change.

I was drawn to all of the characters, except her mom of course, and impressed with the way people worked with her to help avoid her triggers. Having an invisible illness is really challenging. I'm not thrilled that there seemed to be a really negative perception of Autism, but we don't think of the challenges of people who have these forms of disorders. Highly recommend.

This is a great story that helps explain Sensory Processing Disorder in a way that kids and adults can understand, with a heartwarming tale of Lou Montgomery. Lou is a great character and one that every reader will enjoy.

With thanks to NetGalley for an early copy in return for an honest review.

I think this is a book all teachers should read as it is incredibly helpful to hear from a kid's POV what it can be like to live with Sensory Processing Disorder...particularly about something that can be difficult to articulate and explain.

As we follow Lou from Tahoe (where she lived with her mom) to Nashville (where she lives with her aunt and uncle) we see her navigate family, friendship and being brave. I loved this quote from the theatre teacher about Into the Woods and how that musical reflected some of Lou's journey. "Into the Woods" is about magic and hope, yes. But more than that, it's about living beyond the neat ending and walking bravely into the rest of your life.

Tune It Out by Jamie Sumner is a fast paced, fun read about a girl, Lou Montgomery, who has a beautiful singing voice but also has sensory processing issues. Lou does not like loud noises, being touched, or crowds. She feels there is something severely wrong with her. Her mother, however, is in denial of her issues, and just writes it off as shyness, The mother is constantly trying to find Lou's big break into show business, which distresses Lou immensely. In addition to these difficulties, they live in their car, Lou doesn't attend school, and at one point are discovered. Subsequently. Lou is sent to live with an aunt and uncle she doesn't know. This is a wonderful story about a girl trying to figure out who she is, where she fits in and how to reconnect with her mother. I loved it!

I liked this book overall. I think it covers a topic/topics that a lot of books for this age category tend to shy away from that we need to be talking about. At the same time, nothing about this book stood out very much to me. It was okay.

Tune It Out was a remarkable story about a girl who discovers that she is a fighter, especially when life gets hard and seems impossible to get through. Finding out along the way that it’s sometimes okay to ask for help and to have friends who support you. I work with students who have sensory disorders and this book is a true testament to what it’s like for students to deal with them on an everyday basis. Jamie Sumner does a great job connecting us to these characters and keeping us along for the ride. This will be a perfect addition to our schools library for MG readers!

Lou and her mom live in their truck near Lake Tahoe. Lou’s mom pushes her to sing in public, even though she knows that crowds, loud noises, handshakes, and more scare Lou. Twelve-year-old Lou is expected to drive the truck a few miles into town late at night to pick up her mom after work. One night, Lou gets into an accident. Child protective services gets involved, and Lou is sent across the country to live with her aunt and uncle.

Lou now has regular meals, a warm, comfortable bed, new clothes, and is attending a private school. She slowly lets her guard down and learns that she can count on others and learns how to advocate for herself and recognize her own strengths.

At the end of the book, the author mentions the research she did for this book; it is not #ownvoices. It is the first book with a child who has SPD (and is not named as being on the autism spectrum) that I have read. I am not qualified to judge the accuracy of the representation, though it closely resembles an outsider’s perspective of people I know who have SPD.

I think this book is one that children will enjoy reading. It would make a great read aloud, and it will prompt rich discussion. This is also a book that I think teachers and pre-service teachers should read and carefully consider the different ways teachers react to Lou and how that impacts her.

Tune It Out focuses the spotlight on Sensory Processing Disorder, and how kids with SPD have to compensate and adapt to function in our world. Louise (or Lou) has always been very sensitive to certain sounds, like sirens, and doesn't like to be touched. However, she doesn't know that there is a name and a treatment for how she feels.
The book begins when she is living with her mother in a truck, because they cannot afford an apartment. She isn't going to school, and her mother is forcing her to sing at coffeehouses, on street corners, and at fairs. Despite the negative aspects of this life, she loves her mother, and her mother loves her. When Lou goes to pick up her mother after her shift in the snow (driving the truck, even though she is only 12), she has a traffic accident and the police and Social Services get involved. Now, she is taken away from her mother, and placed with her aunt and uncle, who she barely knows. Her life changes dramatically, from living on the edges of society to having her own bedroom and bathroom and as much food as she wants and going to a private school and making friends. But she still misses her mom and wants her to be a part of her life.
This book feels authentic and accurately portrays how a child with SPD (especially undiagnosed) feels when confronted with the things that trigger her. It also accurately depicts poverty and how single parents struggle to make it when they don't have a support network of family and/or friends. I would highly recommend it for tweens because it might help them understand why certain classmates react the way they do to the fire alarm, or if they have a rigid routine that must be followed each day. Understanding that we all have our differences and being different isn't a bad thing is a very important lesson that students don't always learn at home or at school.

This book was fantastic! I am so happy to have gotten an eARC to review, I may have liked it even better than Jamie Sumner's first book. The story show Lou's journey from being homeless with her mom and not fully understanding why loud sounds and touches send her into panic to getting to know her aunt and uncle and developing strategies to navigate her sensory processing disorder. Lou's character is so dynamic and her voice is authentic. She loves coffee, music, singing but not in front of people, she wants to make friends but is scared they might not accept who she is. I appreciated that the ending left things complicated and didn't tie up everything neatly. I look forward to sharing this book with students.
This book address poverty, hunger, homelessness, complex family dynamics, sensory processing disorders, therapy, and what is like to be a middle school girl facing all of these challenges along with normal middle school friendships. It also addressed how valuable it is to allow social workers, counselors and psychologist help when needed.

This novel would be a great one to use in book groups because it covers so many themes. It's great to see middle grades readers treated as adult enough to understand themes like homelessness, parental neglect, and neurologically atypical people. I'd love to use this to foster empathy in my readers.

I loved this gentle middle-grade story about a girl with lots of fears and lots of courage. Lou and her mom are living on the edge - of poverty and safety. When their world falls apart and she is placed in foster care Lou has an opportunity to change her life. Surrounded by caring adults and given all the support a kid should have we get to see her truly shine.
Jamie Sumner is turning into one of my must-read authors!
This review is based on an ARC provided to me by the publisher.

This was very good. I liked the inclusion of therapy and the SPD. It shows that kids have problems and are still kids. I also like that she didn't end up back with her mom like a happy ending.

This. This is what is needed. A book that grabs the reader's attention with a realistic story-line, that allows the character's voices to shine through in the narrative. Reading this gave the feeling like I was there with Lou, hearing the noises, and feeling anxious with her. The plot is woven together so beautifully, with incredible thought and research done for each of the "mini plot lines" and for each character we are introduced to. One needs to finish the book the minute you start reading it, you get pulled into the story so fast you start to forget your own realities and root for Lou to find her way, and her own voice.

A must have!! As a teacher, I'm constantly trying to find books with messages of acceptance. This is one!!

As a sixth grader, Louise, Lou, has a phobia with being touched and hearing loud noises. (This is an actual disability affecting many children, today!) We follow Lou as she tries to overcome her challenges alone. Will she ever find help? Should she open up to her friends?

I love the plot and character building. Well is my favorite side character!!

I thought the "issue" side of this - homelessness, dealing with CPS, emotionally confusing parent-child relationship, invisible disability/SPD - was well done and nicely developed (though obviously I'd like to hear more from the ownvoices side of things in regards to these), and the writing was solid throughout. The ending was hopeful/settled, but with a bit of a roughness that I actually appreciated; sometimes the perfectly happy ending can be difficult or unsatisfying for the readers who relate most to the situations. Part of me did feel that the narrative arcs might have been more powerful with more time, but it is middle grade so length is a factor.

I did find the narrative voice, though consistent, interesting, and relatable, to feel a little older; the best middle grade/YA writers make me forget that they're adults writing for young readers, and with this there was something about the tone that kept making me remember. I think part of it was the references: though the book is apparently meant to take place in 2019, toward the beginning I would have said that it was somewhere between 1980 and 2005 - I couldn't get a handle on things until Kacey Musgraves was mentioned. Characters reference Gilligan's Island and Charlie's Angel, which I think would be fairly unfamiliar for the target audience, for whom even Friends and Fresh Prince is retro. These are called out as "old" shows, but more modern references to iPods, Miley Cyrus, and Justin Timberlake all felt slightly dated and "how do you do, fellow kids?", making the perspective and world feel sort of muddied. The other characters were well-drawn, but I don't know that the relationship between them and Lou came off as powerfully as they might have. Additionally, side character Well was either being set up to have his own book, or should have gotten further resolution in this one.

Good material for a middle grade realistic fiction collection.

Loved, loved, loved this book! Lou Montgomery lives with her mom in a truck and doesn't go to school. She has an amazing singing voice but doesn't like to be in the spotlight or to be touched. After a little accident, Lou is sent to live with her aunt and uncle where she learns more about what her mother calls her "quirkiness." Through the help of teacher and friends, Lou learns about her Sensory Processing Disorder and how to cope. A wonderful middle grade novel about facing challenges.