Aisha Bushby's "A Pocketful of Stars" is a fantastic journey through grief that does an impressive job of keeping the story both appropriate for a general middle grade audience without patronizing children who may be going through loss in their real lives.

Even as an adult reader, I was impressed by how well paced and emotionally nuanced the story managed to be. And while the fantasy/magical realism elements are occasionally too convenient, I appreciated how they never crossed the line into something that would overbalance the issues around children being essentially powerless when dealing with a slow parental loss.

Very well done. Highly recommended for the 10-14 age group.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

I really enjoyed A Pocketful of Stars by Aisha Bushby. I thought the characters were well fleshed out, the story made sense and flowed well, and it was just an overall enjoyable read.

Prepare to have your heart broken. Safiya is absolutely a character who will grab your heart and not let go. Saff has a close relationship with her dad, but has trouble connecting to her mom. In fact, it seems like her mom loves her best friend more. But tragedy comes crashing in, and Safiya has to deal with so many broken pieces of her heart. I loved Saff's gaming passion, and her mom's love of theatre, and the power of storytelling that unites this entire book. Safiya is on a personal journey, collecting bits and pieces of the puzzle of memories, and she's running out of time.

"It makes me think of Peter Pan and how they all go to Neverland. Second star to the left, and straight on til morning... I shake my head. Adults can't go to Neverland."

My heart.

This was such a touching, deep story of the complicated relationships we have with our parents and friends. I loved the fact that the main character, Safiya, is the daughter of Kuwaiti refugees and her biggest problem is getting tickets to a video game convention. As the book progresses, her mother has a stroke and is in a coma. Suddenly Safiya is sure if she can just solve the video game she can save her mom.

Along the way she must find a whole new source of bravery and learn to navigate a friendship that is not working. This was such an astonishing book because I felt the same magical thinking all the way through, sure that everything would be ok in the end. But sometimes things just aren't. And life goes on. What a beautiful book! I highly recommend this for schools and libraries.

A beautiful middle grade novel about love and loss. Safiya and her mom don't always get along. After one particularly bad fight, she storms away, only to find out the next week that her mother has slipped into a coma. As she visits her mother's hospital bed, she falls into strange dreams which she soon comes to realize are actually her mother's childhood memories. What are these memories trying to tell her? Maybe it's a second chance for a deeper connection.

I devoured this story in one short sitting, and oh my heart! Such a poignant tale of the memories we hold onto and the connection between loved ones. I was crying like a baby as the story reached its conclusion. This novel gives a realistic portrayal of adolescent friendship and parental relationships, with an added bit of magic. The fantasy depiction of the dreams/memories was so well done. I could easily envision the scenes. I loved this one so much, even though it broke my heart.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

First of all, how dare you??
Second of all, absolutely give this a read!

This story broke me, and now I'm going to make it everyone else's problem.

This story has a first person POV following a thirteen year old named Safiya and her struggles both immediately preceding and following her mother falling into a coma. I'm not always one for first person, but this was executed so well that I honestly felt like I was just, riding alongside this kid as she struggled with learning to understand her mother, her friends, and herself.

The memory-based time travel of this story was what initially compelled me to read, and also where I initially fell in love. Dream sequences can be difficult to nail both clearly and cohesively while maintaining the surrealistic quality OF dreams. Aisha Bushby absolutely nailed this by using video game logic. The magical realism of it is gorgeous, and while I have plenty of opinions about the implications! none of them are critiques that necessitate spoiling the mystery.

I'm just gonna be crying for a while that the video game nerd used her love of video games to connect with her mother (who did not understand her love for gaming) AND to connect with friends! To reach out to the world at large even when her inner world was drowning. Safiya's growth, resilience, and strength of character was everything, and I can only wish that I'd found and read this sooner.

"A Pocketful of Stars" by Aisha Bushby appears to be a deeply moving and introspective novel that explores the complex dynamics between a mother and daughter, intertwined with elements of memory, self-discovery, and a touch of the fantastical.

The premise of Safiya experiencing her mother's memories during her coma is both intriguing and emotionally charged. It offers a unique perspective on the mother-daughter relationship, allowing Safiya to gain insight into her mother's past and, by extension, her own identity.

The use of gaming as a metaphor for Safiya's journey adds an interesting layer to the narrative, as it suggests that her path to understanding and acceptance may be filled with challenges, obstacles, and even the need to "unlock" certain aspects of her own emotions and self.

The setting of Kuwait and the rich cultural backdrop it provides can be expected to bring depth and authenticity to the story, offering readers a glimpse into a world that might be unfamiliar to them.

Overall, "A Pocketful of Stars" seems like a touching and thought-provoking exploration of family, memory, and self-discovery. It promises to be a poignant read that delves into the complexities of relationships and the power of understanding and empathy, all wrapped up in a narrative that combines the ordinary with the extraordinary.

I forget that not all books have happy endings. I always think that all YAs will end well, like most romances do, but they don’t.

This is one that keeps tearing at your heart, until you think it can’t hurt anymore.

Safiya doesn’t hate her mother, she just thinks she doesn’t understand her. And she gets angry when she sees her mother make assumptions about her. Typical teenager stuff. She has chosen to live with her father, who doesn’t ask questions, and doesn’t want to be buddies, the way her mother does.

Then she has a big argument with her mom, and learns that she has had a massive stroke, and it is a medical coma to bring her back. She is told that those in commas can hear you, so she goes and sits with her, and begins to find herself in memories of her mother’s, back in Kuwait, where she begins to understand why her mother thought they were so similar.

Each time she goes, she notices that her mother's house looks a little shabier, as though it is reflecting her mother’s medical state.

I don’t normally like to have my feelings played with, but this book did so anyway, pulling at my heartstrings, as you see Safiya realize the wrong she had done her mother, as she remains in her coma.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. This book is coming out the 5th of September 2023.

It's been a while since middle grade made me Feel Things, but this delivered. It really hits that MG perfection: sweet without being sappy, just complicated enough to be interesting.
*the magical realism hits just right
*middle school drama can be annoying to read as a not-middle schooler, but this never got that way
*the main character has glasses and loves video games (like me) which I liked
*the scenes in Kuwait could have been fleshed out a little more, but it didn't really get in the way of my overall enjoyment
*not gonna lie I was not fully expecting the ending, but it was fitting

Safiya is an 8th grader struggling to relate to her mom, fit in with her peers, and then the worst happens: a teenage hormone filled fight with her mom right before her mom ends up in the hospital in a coma.

Through a storyline of fantasy flashbacks of her mom’s own teenage life, Safiya learns that she is more like her mom than she had previously imagined. This coming of age story deals with friendships, growing as a person, and reconciling with your loved ones.

I think the topic would be more appropriate for older secondary school students 8th through twelfth.

Safiya parents, James Fisher and Aminah Al-Adwani, have been divorced for a while. She lives with her father, but her weekends are spent spending quality time with her mother, who is a lawyer. They usually have a good time, but after a recent weekend spent at a production of Rapunzel with her friend Elle, Safiya and her mother have an argument. Saff doesn't care about the theater, and she's angry that she missed out buying tickets to a gaming convention her father offered to take her to because she had to go to the play. Elle loved the play, but Elle and Saff have had some difficult times because of the new crowd of students that Elle has befriended. After exchanging heated word with her mother, there's bad news a week or so later; her mother has had a stroke and is in the hospital in a coma. Safiya, of course, thinks that part of this is her problem, and tries to make her mother as comfortable as she can, going to her apartment to pick up a blanket and her favorite perfume. During one visit, she has a weird vision, and soon learns that these visions are glimpses into her mother's life in Kuwait when she was a girl. Her mother was involved in a small theater group with her friends, but her younger sister is angry that Aminah isn't spending time with her, and tells their mother, who doesn't approve of the play acting. When not visiting her mother, life goes on for Safiya. People give her pitying glances, and try to be supportive, but it's difficult. She tries to hang out with Elle and her new friends, but they are horrifically mean to others, including Charlotte. Safiyah calls out the bad behavior, which endears her to Charlotte and her friends, and she finds out that she has more in common with them than with Elle, who laughs off the bullying. Even as her mother's condition worsens and the visions increase, Safiyah is glad to have new friends who share her interest in gaming. The visions show her that her mother wanted to come to the UK to go to boarding school, and her grandmother didn't understand, which lead to a similar fight. The grandmother died when Aminah was studying abroad, and it turns out that she was also able to see visions of what was going on back home. Safiyah thinks that she can save her mother if she can get more of her special perfume, but it is not to be.
Strengths: Readers of British middle grade literature will notice a very strong flavor of Jacqueline Wilson's or Onjali Q. Rauf's (especially in The Star Outside My Window) style of writing in this. While these authors all explore the trope of parents dying, there is a much stronger sense of agency and resilience in the protagonist's outlook that I enjoy. Yes, it's horrible that Safiya's mother has had a stroke. But life doesn't stop. Visits to the hospital occur in between school, eating dinner with her father, and even hanging out with friends. I loved these lines (from the E ARC): Losing someone you love is weird. You think you'll feel sad all the time, but sometimes that's not how it is. You find moments of happiness in between, like rays of light shining through on a cloudy day." What a much better message for young people than the US depiction of parents so distraught with grief that they can't get out of bed or take care of remaining children. Not only is that insulting, it makes for a boring story. A Pocketful of Stars combines the impending grief with friend drama as well as some magical realism that helps to explore the mother-daughter bond in a very interesting way. I'd love to see more exploration in middle grade literature about parent-child relationships instead of just killing them off. More relatable, and much more interesting. I'm sure my daughter could write an entire book about her 6th grade year, when she kept a cat in her closet, was grounded, and lost the opportunity to go trick or treating not because of the cat, but because I caught her flipping me off right as I was ungrounding her!
Weaknesses: The trips into the mother's house in Kuwait were interesting, but I wanted a more solid process behind them, somehow. The rest of the book was so grounded in reality that I wanted to fantasy element to be more structured.
What I really think: This is worth purchasing for Safiya's interactions with the bullying and her friendship with Elle alone. I haven't read anything else by Bushby, but I am certainly now intrigued as to whether she has any other titles available in the US. Definitely purchasing.