Merci Suarez Changes Gears

  Merci Suarez Changes Gears

Medina, Meg. MERCI SUAREZ. New York: Candlewick, 2018.

ISBN 978-0763690496

Merci Suarez Changes Gears is a delightful novel chronicling Merci Suarez as she makes the transition from "little kid" status to tween, adjusts to changing friend dynamics, and serious family issues. Merci Suarez and her older brother Roli (a brainy student who is applying to colleges) both attend Seaward, a private school. They are scholarship students and are surrounded by much wealthier students who frequently ask Merci questions like "Where are you vacationing?," assuming that everyone can fly to Europe over summer break. Merci mostly doesn't mind this income disparity, except for her bicycle. She really wants a fancy bicycle like the other sixth graders. What she does mind is the fact that her friends seem to be changing. Kids that previously all ate lunch together are now separating into gendered groups: boys sit with boys and girls sit with girls, and any crossing of that divide is now seen as something different than merely being friendly. Girls who previously played baseball or soccer, now sit on the sidelines and watch the boys. Meanwhile, at home, Merci becomes aware that the Suarez family, with their strict rule about not lying, may be keeping secrets from her.

 Merci Suarez Changes Gears Book Trailer

Merci Suarez is smart, inquisitive girl who loves soccer, baseball, her family (her grandfather in particular). She gets into normal scrapes and misadventures, leading a healthy childhood. She doesn't understand why the girls around her (particularly her frenemy Edna Santos) are so eager to grow up and stop the fun they had just recently. She likes things staying the same. She has finally adjusted to the fancy private school (this is her second year here). Now she is forced to participate in "The Sunshine Club" which is a club that pairs established students as "friends" to new students, so the new students have a connection to the school: someone to show them around and be a friendly face. Merci is paired with a boy. With the changing gender dynamic in her friend group, this makes things awkward for her. She can't refuse, because it is a condition of her scholarship.

Lolo is her grandfather who lives in a house across the street from her (her whole family: grandparents and aunt and her twins) all live in three small houses next to each other. This inter-generational living arrangement creates a healthy, stable social and emotional home for Merci. Lolo is a fun, adventurous grandfather. He loves all his grandchildren (even the rambunctious twins), but has a special relationship with Merci. He calls her his "Precioso". They go on long bike rides together, play baseball together, work at the family paint business together, and he listens patiently to her growing pains. Lolo's behavior, however, is becoming increasingly erratic. He gets lost and confused and occasionally angry, which is uncharacteristic of him. Merci eventually finds out he has Alzheimer's which the family had been hiding from her.

 Interview with Meg Medina

The theme of this novel is adapting to change. Nobody likes change. Merci is like many girls who do not want to grow up as fast as others. She is like many of us who don't like change. However, life does not remain in stasis, and Merci must adapt. At first she reacts stubbornly, getting mad and moody at the people around her. Some of her anger is understandable, particularly the feelings relating to the scary diagnosis of Lolo. Eventually she learns to find some of the good in change: a deeper relationship with her brother, more empathy with an enemy, new friends outside her circle, and finding a new role in her family (being the kind of friend to her cousins that her grandfather was to her). As Merci says, "I can handle it, I decide. It's just a harder gear, and I am ready. All I have to do is take a deep breath and ride" (p. 263).

Merci Suarez Changes Gears is set in Miami, FL in a community that is mostly Hispanic, with a large concentration of Cuban immigrants (Lolo is Cuban and escaped to the US). The book characters are mostly Hispanic, of all socioeconomic levels. What I like about this book is that it is a normal mid-grade novel that happens to have Hispanic main and majority characters. It's not an "immigrant" story or story of hardship. It shows that these sorts of "regular" mid-grade novels can have characters of any ethnicity. They don't need a default white main character. The Cuban details are authentic and rich. The Spanish used throughout has a Cuban regionality to it, and they celebrate many Cuban customs, naturally throughout the story. It's just a normal part of the background of the novel. In the back matter, the author Meg Medina states that she deliberately chose to write the Suarez family living close together, "I wanted to celebrate grandparents and families that live intergenerationally, the way that we often see in Latino families" (p. 265).

Programming Connection

Students will create a Venn diagram of things they did in a previous year and the current year: what songs they liked, what games they played, who their friends were and what they did. They will then fill in what things are the same in the center of the diagram. After creating the Venn diagram, students will write a reflection on what things have changed. Have things changed for the better? For the worse? How have they reacted to the change? Will they react differently when things change again?