Nina Soni, Former Best Friend

by Kashmira Sheth, Jenn Kocsmiersky (Illustrator)

Overview

The first title in a new series featuring a lovable, distractible Indian-American girl and her family and friends.
Nina tried as hard as she could, but still somehow she forgot about her school project. Fortunately, a class lesson about Alexander Fleming suggests how she might make a great discovery—and thus a great project! But with little sister Kavita's birthday party right around the corner, and her longtime friendship with Jay on the rocks, Nina has a lot to keep track of.
Readers are sure to relate to author Kashmira Sheth’s endearing Nina Soni and her slightly scatter-brained efforts to manage her life with lists, definitions, and real-life math problems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682630570
Publisher:	Peachtree Publishing Company
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Series:	Nina Soni Series
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	590L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Kashmira Sheth was born in India and came to the US when she was seventeen to attend Iowa State University, where she received a BS in microbiology. She is the author of several picture books, middle grade, and young adult novels. Sheth teaches at Pine Manor College, in their Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Jenn Kocsmierksy is a watercolor artist and picture book illustrator. She was adopted from Seoul, South Korea and grew up in rural New Hampshire. Now, as a mom and artist, Jenn hopes to promote relatable childhood experiences featuring diverse characters. She was the recipient of the 2018 We Need Diverse Books Mentorship for Illustration and the 2016–2017 Walter Dean Meyers Grant. She lives in New York with her two children and a ginormous goldfish named Joey.

Editorial Reviews

Sheth’s language is poetic in its simplicity, and her narratorial voice is a pleasure to read…. A sweet and entertaining series opener about family and friendship.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2019-06-16
Nina is worried that her best friend, Jay, might not be her best friend anymore.

Nina Soni has been best friends with Jay Davenport since before she was born. But when Jay's cousins move to town, he has less and less time for Nina—so little time, in fact, that she wonders if they're still best friends. Nina is so distracted that she forgets about her Personal Narrative Project, an assignment in which Nina is supposed to write about something interesting that's happened to her. At first, Nina wonders how she'll ever write the essay when her family—and, by extension, her life—is so boring. But when Jay announces that he's going to write the best PNP ever, Nina sees his challenge as a way to recover their friendship. Sheth's language is poetic in its simplicity, and her narratorial voice is a pleasure to read. The book particularly sparkles whenever Nina interacts with her small but tightknit family, especially when she has to rescue her quirky younger sister, Kavita, from endless scrapes. The conflict between Nina and Jay, however, feels forced and tangential to the story, which really centers on Nina's personal narrative and her loving, albeit exasperating, relationship with her family. Both Nina and Jay are Indian American; she on both sides of her family and he through his mother (his father is white).

A sweet and entertaining series opener about family and friendship. (Fiction. 7-10)

Kirkus Reviews

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