It's My Party and I Don't Want to Go

by Amanda Panitch

Overview

A funny and honest portrayal of living with social anxiety, this timely novel explores the universal themes of growing up and finding your voice, set in a fast-paced comedy.

Ellie Katz is sabotaging her own party.Sure, it seems extreme, but it's the only option for her bat mitzvah. Crowds and attention always made her nervous, and lately they've been making it harder and harder for Ellie to breathe. The celebration would mean (1) a large crowd, (2) lots of staring, and (3) distant family listening to her sing in another language. No thank you!To avoid certain catastrophe, she hatches a plan with her best friend Zoe to ruin the big day. Cue the email hacking, DJ takedown, and an all-out food fight! Everything is falling apart according to plan, until a fight with Zoe leaves Ellie alone on her path of destruction, facing some unintended consequences and disappointments. Can she find a way to right her wrongs, face her fears, and light her candles?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338621204
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	684,288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	720L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Amanda Panitch spent most of her childhood telling stories to her four younger siblings, trying both to make them laugh and scare them too much to sleep. Now she lives in New York City, where she writes dark, funny stories for teens, kids, and the pigeons that nest on her apartment balcony. Visit Amanda online at amandapanitch.com.

Editorial Reviews

2020-05-03
It can’t be that difficult to sabotage your own bat mitzvah.

Ellie’s shy, quiet, and afraid of interacting with almost everyone but her family and her only friend, Zoe. At older sister Hannah’s bat mitzvah, Ellie had such a panic attack about appearing before strangers that she thought she was dying. Now she’ll do anything to prevent her own bat mitzvah from happening—anything, that is, except tell her parents. Ellie (white and Jewish) harangues Zoe (black and Christian) into a series of increasingly goofball attempts to stealthily deep-six the bat mitzvah. From hiding the invitations to faking her own death, Ellie’s shenanigans result in cringe comedy that (despite the embarrassment of the situations she creates) is always respectful of her devastating anxiety. The light touch leads to some too-easy solutions, with Ellie, at 12, effectively self-inventing cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorder before anyone else even knows she has a condition. Ellie’s concern with her own mental health finds her selfishly ignoring Zoe’s well-being, and working through the complications created by her unthinking cruelty requires getting through more anxiety spirals about damaged friendships. Humor keeps the tone light, nevertheless, perhaps never more so than in a massive and squishy food fight at a classmate’s bar mitzvah.

Personal growth plus the comedy of sundry humiliating situations created to avoid embarrassment: satisfying. (Fiction. 8-11)

Kirkus Reviews