In late 1970s New York City, Alma lives in the East Village with her Chinese American mom and white Jewish dad. She loves spending time with her friends and riding her bike on her own; most of all, she loves music, with tastes that are eclectic and wide-ranging. When Alma’s parents, who argue a lot, tell Alma they’re divorcing, it isn’t exactly a surprise, but that doesn’t make it easy. Both her parents clearly love her and still care about each other, but trying to balance what’s best for each of them individually with their needs as a family is a challenge. The power and pleasure of this novel in verse is in the keenly captured details of Alma’s feelings—about her family, her friends, her neighborhood, her first kiss, her terrific guidance counselor, her burgeoning feminism (evident in her analysis of the Greek myth she’s studying in English class), and so much more. All of it is vibrant and vivid on the page, along with a marvelous sense of time and place. The many cultural references to music and other elements of life in the late 1970s (many poems reference or open with song lyrics from the era) won’t always be recognizable to today’s readers, but what is recognizable, and resonant, are the feelings and experiences of young teenage girlhood that transcend any specifics of the era. (Ages 11-14)

A lyrical novel-in-verse that takes us through the journey of coming of age in New York during the 80s.

Alma's life is a series of halfways: She's half-Chinese, half-Jewish; her parents spend half the time fighting, and the other half silent; and she's halfway through becoming a woman. But as long as she can listen to her Walkman, hang out with her friends on the stoops of the Village, and ride her bike around the streets of New York, it feels like everything will be all right. Then comes the year when everything changes, and her life is overtaken by constant endings: friends move away, romances bloom and wither, her parents divorce and--just like that--her life as she knew it is over. In this world of confusing beginnings, middles, and endings, is Alma ready to press play on the soundtrack of her life?