This Journal Belongs to Ratchet

March 11, 2013
Eleven-year-old Ratchet records her observations, complaints (“Everything in my life is old and recycled”), worries, and goals (“To be a girl who fits in—hopefully one with a friend”) in a series of writing exercises for her language arts “class” (she’s homeschooled by her single father) in Cavanaugh’s debut novel. But fitting in is difficult for a girl nicknamed after a mechanic’s tool, who doesn’t have a mother, doesn’t attend a “real” school, and spends her days helping her “crazy environmentalist” father fix cars. Worse, her father’s outspoken political views have won him the wrong kind of publicity around town, and his battle to save Moss Tree Park from becoming a strip mall looks like a lost cause. Cavanaugh uses bold, often humorous first-person narration to capture the essence of an unconventional heroine struggling to figure out who she is supposed to be. Ratchet’s journal—written on lined paper and filled with a medley of lists, poems, stories, essays, and doodles—offers an enticing blend of strong social views, family secrets, and deeply felt emotions. Ages 9–up. Agent: Holly Root, Waxman Leavell Literary Agency.

Starred review from March 15, 2013
An 11-year-old home-schooled girl who longs to live like everyone else learns that her strange life with her father may be weird, but it's also wonderful. Ratchet, whose real name is Rachel, lives with her father, a "crazy environmentalist," who believes that he has a God-given mission to save the Earth. In consequence, Ratchet, who lost her mom when she was 5, wears thrift-shop clothing and helps her father repair cars in their driveway. This makes her both an able mechanic and a magnet for the derision of the neighborhood kids. Ratchet longs to go to school, to buy cute clothing and, most significantly, to make a friend. In a book that is full of surprises, it turns out that assisting her protest-junkie father in his court-ordered community service as a go-cart-building instructor is the catalyst she needs. This is how she will find female helpers and role models, make a friend and even save a little piece of the world. The story has a gimmick; it consists entirely of entries in the language-arts notebook Ratchet uses to record her home-school assignments. At first it seems artificial, with observations that are too on-the-nose. But as the novel's unexpectedly multifaceted plot comes together, it becomes increasingly compelling, suspenseful and moving. Triumphant enough to make readers cheer; touching enough to make them cry. (Fiction. 9-13)

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July 1, 2013
In journal entries and poems, eleven-year-old Ratchet (Rachel) expresses her exasperation with her outspoken activist dad; her desire to know more about her deceased mother; and her desperate need for friends. The clichi of the friendless, isolated homeschooler will annoy actual homeschooled readers, but others will be drawn to Ratchet's plight and her eventual understanding of her dad's great traits.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)