Stepping Stones by Lucy Knisley

(Note: I wrote this before looking at other reviews. I agree with the many other reviewers who brought up that Walter is bordering on emotionally abusive and it's concerning for the story and for young readers that this is not seriously addressed. That is a big deal and I don't want to dismiss that. But with respect to that, I haven't seen people bring up the dyscalculia rep, and I wanted to write a review that dove into that.)

Stepping Stones follows the story of Jen, an elementary school aged kid who moves from New York City to the country with her mom and her mom’s new boyfriend Walter after her parents divorce. This is a big transition for her, and she is understandably fuming at the move and how little control she has over her new life, which now includes a slew of farm responsibilities, fights with her mom and her new stepdad (who's honestly just mean) and a new stepsister who’s know-it-all tendencies clash with Jen’s insecurities about school. Despite all of this and Jen’s turbulent feelings and resentments, we see her finding moments of beauty and fun with nature. There’s beautifully done panels of Jen exploring the farm and her quiet joy at finding kittens, her sketching a barn owl in the woods, her sucking a honeystick in the bed of a pickup truck and watching the trees go by. These moments only blossom as she and her stepsisters mend fences and experience these adventures together.

The author’s art style is gentle and expressive, done with colored pencil that reminds me of Mel Gillman, another colored pencil artist and writer who wrote As The Crow Flies, Stagedreams, and Other Ever Afters, which are awesome queer stories that incorporate nature and folktale. As if this wasn’t enough, along with the amazing art that makes up the bulk of the story, Jen’s own art is incorporated with her own art style. We see practice sketches of adorable animals and flashbacks from her life that are shown in a scraggly but endearing comic book style. You can tell the author really respects younger artists and gives them space to grow. It honestly even pushed me to nurture my own haphazard sketches because this idea of the author’s younger self and her art is rendered so lovingly.

Look at how cute this is, seriously.

Ultimately though, what made this book shine for me was the dyscalculia representation. Dyscalculia is a learning disorder sometimes compared to “math dyslexia”, where people will struggle with processing number-based information and math. Stories about dyscalculia are underrepresented. It’s included in the story because the author has it, and a lot of it is based on her life. We don’t see the word dyscalculia used in the story, but as the reader we understand that Jen struggles with math and is judged for it by her parents and stepsister, feeling ashamed and frustrated that people see her as dumb. The context that the author and main character has dyscalculia is explained in the author’s note. While in the novel the characters don’t understand the concept of dyscalculia, over time the story expresses that there are other strengths and smarts that Jen has outside of what’s seen as school-smart, and the other characters come to respect that.

(Mostly. Walter sucks and I’m coming back to him.)

But I really connected with this. I haven’t been diagnosed with dyscalculia (although I wonder) but I struggle with math and have other learning disorders. As a kid especially it was so hard feeling judged for not being able to grasp basic math and feeling like there was this huge wall around understanding any of it. I picked this up as a light read but I was stunned how much I related to Jen and how I hurt for her when her mom and stepdad told her to just try harder and added to her shame at being judged at something that was just kind of impossible for her. This book would’ve meant so much to me as a kid, I mean, it still means so much now that I’m writing like a thousand words about it. In a review with paragraphs and explanations! Those are hard.

But on to Walter, Jen’s mom’s boyfriend. I felt frustrated that the book ended without real resolution between Jen and her stepdad when he so often didn’t take her seriously and said things that hurt the people around him. And Jen’s mom seemed frustrated with him too. I felt like if she just divorced someone, she would be less tolerant of that kind of crap, but the book ended with none of that resolved. And it's not like this isn't a hard conversation to have in a middle grade novel that’s about sisters and by breaking up the relationship you’re seperating the girls, leaving the two siblings with their dad, and it’s a way messier conversation, especially from the fact that it’s based on the author’s life and seems like the couple did stay together. But it's still damaging and concerning, especially the way that Jen's mom and stepsister normalize the abuse by saying "he's like that to everyone." That's, uh, still bad, maybe worse, and doesn't excuse a grown man's behavior. I think I’m a little hyper sensitive to this because I’m interested in education and the way I’ve been taught to interact with kids is to listen to them and not speak over their real feelings, and I see the adults in this book do that over and over again. Which is fair to represent because it’s such a constant part of life, but I wish we could see those adults grow a little bit more, or the story really capture that it knows that's not okay. I do agree with people's concerns that this normalizes abuse for young readers. Reflecting further, maybe this isn't the kind of book I would've wanted myself to find as a kid, but as an adult with a math learning disorder who can challenge those relationships, Stepping Stones was a meaningful read to me.