The biggest thing to understand about this book from a concerning content standpoint revolves around the character’s attitudes, especially the main character Elena. We start in a baseball game and after she is thrown out at home to end the game, she overhears the other team make a mild insult. She responds by insulting one of their players harshly. Her mom is also shown in an angry confrontation and she looks like she is cursing. Elena is very negative to those trying to console her. And this sets the stage for the vast majority of the book as it is told through her eyes. She is shown being very rude to her brother. She mumbles rude responses to her mother under her breath. She also intentionally misleads her mom by vastly over exaggerating an injury (no remorse, and to make this worse, Grandpa knows and half threatens to tell her mom if she doesn’t do something he wants her to do). Siblings look at a plan their mom put together as a document and throw it on the ground and walk out rudely. The siblings are negative to each other a lot too.

Parents should also know that this book puts a lot of positive emphasis on LARPing (Live Action Role Playing). It is a huge part of the plot.

Other items of note:

• A boy comments that “It’s not like her mom would even let her hang out anyway”.
• The sadness and feel of the main character trying to deal with a challenging pressure from mom situation is a bit heavier than you probably expect at first glance at the cover/format.
• The backstory of a side character includes both parents passing away recently, which is also heavy.
• Dungeons and Dragons is also mentioned.

Note: We left this as a Medium concern rating because reading through this type of negative content does take a toll on our kiddos, especially younger ones that will always be drawn to illustrated formats like these.