The Way You Make Me Feel

From the publishers:

From the author of I Believe in a Thing Called Love, a laugh-out-loud story of love, new friendships, and one unique food truck.

Clara Shin lives for pranks and disruption. When she takes one joke too far, her dad sentences her to a summer working on his food truck, the KoBra, alongside her uptight classmate Rose Carver. Not the carefree summer Clara had imagined. But maybe Rose isn't so bad. Maybe the boy named Hamlet (yes, Hamlet) crushing on her is pretty cute. Maybe Clara actually feels invested in her dad’s business. What if taking this summer seriously means that Clara has to leave her old self behind? With Maurene Goo's signature warmth and humor, The Way You Make Me Feel is a relatable story of falling in love and finding yourself in the places you’d never thought to look.

My thoughts:

I have changed my job/location/school/grade level three times in my career. I started as a high school teacher at a public school, moved to an independent middle school and I am currently teaching university students who want to be teachers. In the three interviews I was always asked: how do you teach multicultural students? In the 26 years that I have been teaching, I have ONLY taught multicultural students, so this question always stumps me. I do not know how to teach monocultural students.  I don't know what lame answer I gave, but looking at my recent reading choices, I think my answer is that I continue to look for literature and stories to bring into my classroom that allow my multicultural students to see themselves in the stories. This is one of those stories. It does not matter if I do not have Korean/Brazilian students. I have students that are two or more ethnicities, raised in an American society that often just sees them as "other" or are "seen" as stereotypes of some form of the model minority. 

Clara is a strong, messed up, broken protagonist that could be any of my students. She is head strong and stubborn but she is salvageable. This kind of voice from Maurene Goo is fresh air for my students.