Merci Suarez Changes Gears vs The Truth as Told By Mason Buttle

Both of these books are beautiful stories and we had a hard time choosing between them.
Merci Suarez Changes Gears is a more complex novel and all the characters are well developed and breaks the stereotype of poor Latino children.   The main character Merci is a sixth grader navigating change in all areas of her life. Merci and her older brother go to a private school in Florida under a scholarship, so themes of not fitting in and the disparities between rich are poor are addressed.  They must do community service as part of the scholarship agreement and Merci is assigned to be a "Sunshine Buddy"  to support new students transitioning to the school.  It is a boy who her friend has a crush on, so this becomes tension between friends in the story.  At home, her beloved grandfather, Lolo is acting strangely- forgetting things, falling down, but no one is talking about this to Merci.

We all loved this book. Merci is a very believable complex character with insight and intelligence.
The struggle with Alzheimers that not only involves the grandfather, but the whole family is powerful
to see through a child's eyes. The story felt very honest with multiple themes of change, friendshop
and alzheimers that kids could connect and relate to.

We all agreed that the story gave such a good message about change.  We have frends whose
parents are going through the struggle of Alzheinmers and will be recommending this book to them.

The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle

We all loved this book too! Mason Buttle is a complex character that has a learning disability and he can barely read or write, compounded with being one of the biggest kids in his grade, and a condition that causes him to sweat excessively. He is a loveable character whose life has been compounded by grief as his best friend died over a year ago, as did his parents a few years before that. The story is also a mystery as through Mason's voice and perspective we begin to unravel the events that led to his best friends death.

The story touches on many themes of friendship, grief and bullying. It will be an excellent read aloud for all age groups of students. Although Mason is a very well developed character, the secondary characters were more flat and one dimensional.
Joyce loved the story so much she searched the author and has already bought and read Waiting for Normal!

We had a lot of discussion about which book should go through as they are both wonderful books that we all want in our classrooms. In the end we chose Mason Buttle for a few reasons: The setting was more general and could be any where in small town North America, whereas Merci Suarez has a very American feel, and we thought students could relate more to Mason Buttle.