Virtually Me | A Middle Grade Book for Kids to Learn about Empathy and Anti-Bullying

“A timely, feel-good tale of learning to accept oneself and others.” ―Kirkus\n“Engaging. The heartfelt core of Virtually Me is the awkward, funny, and incomparable essence of being truly human.” ―Foreword Reviews\nA mysterious package. A new school. A chance to be someone new.\nA new virtual reality school where students get a fresh start.\nThe pandemic was rough on everyone, especially since school went from being a fun place where you could hang out with your friends to a bunch of heads in small rectangles all trying to talk at once. For Bradley, Edelle, Hunter, Jasper, and Keiko, that’s about to change.\nA mysterious box arrives at each of their houses, and they’re invited to attend a virtual school. More than just being online, they’ll be able to create an avatar of themselves and interact with their friends and other classmates in real time using VR headsets.\nFor each of them, that presents an opportunity to become someone they’re not, or someone they haven’t been. For Bradley, it’s a chance to come out of a self-imposed shell. Edelle hopes everyone will see her for who she really is, not just for how she looks. Hunter is looking forward to pretending he’s still the person he was last year. Jasper wants to get over past assumptions. And for Keiko, it’ll allow her to disappear into the crowd.\nFor all of them, it’s a chance to see just how much they’ve assumed about each other in the past and maybe an opportunity to become friends.\nFrom School Library Journal\nGr 3–7—Remember the push to be productive during the pandemic? Morris and Brown accepted that challenge, writing a middle school ode to individuality fueled by remote learning options. Their tale follows three students, chronicling why each one enrolls in the fanciest virtual middle school imaginable. Seriously, socializing there is realistic and visceral, even down to a seamless virtual dance. Each narrator has different motivations—hating public school, "embarrassing" medical problems, parental interventions—but through it all, they begin examining what fuels their relationships. Messages about accepting people for who they are on the inside are ideal for the target tween/early teen group. There is a humanizing inclusion of the bully's viewpoint, where a shallow popular kid experiences a middle grade dark night of the soul. A potential shortcoming may be that the topic of COVID-19—fueled creativity might lend to a short shelf life. The pandemic is written in bold present tense, with masks and quarantining used without explanation. With a tone perfectly geared towards older elementary and young middle school students, it is possible the COVID-19 references may date the plot. VERDICT A classic "be yourself" tale, with enough VR bells and whistles to keep tweens interested.—Cat McCarrey