Ellen Outside the Lines
by A.J. Sasson March 22, 2022
Genres: Middle Grade, Contemporary
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
Rating:
Rain Reign meets Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World in this heartfelt novel about a neurodivergent thirteen-year-old navigating changing friendships, a school trip, and expanding horizons.
Thirteen-year-old Ellen Katz feels most comfortable when her life is well planned out and people fit neatly into her predefined categories. She attends temple with Abba and Mom every Friday and Saturday. Ellen only gets crushes on girls, never boys, and she knows she can always rely on her best-and-only friend, Laurel, to help navigate social situations at their private Georgia middle school.
Laurel has always made Ellen feel like being autistic is no big deal. But lately, Laurel has started making more friends, and cancelling more weekend plans with Ellen than she keeps. A school trip to Barcelona seems like the perfect place for Ellen to get their friendship back on track. Except it doesn't.
Toss in a new nonbinary classmate whose identity has Ellen questioning her very binary way of seeing the world, homesickness, a scavenger hunt-style team project that takes the students through Barcelona to learn about Spanish culture and this trip is anything but what Ellen planned.
Making new friends and letting go of old ones is never easy, but Ellen might just find a comfortable new place for herself if she can learn to embrace the fact that life doesn't always stick to a planned itinerary.
Content Tags:
Perfect for readers who want:
- Books that will help build empathy and understanding in readers.
- Protagonists with autism.
- LGBTQ+ representation, including non-binary characters.
- A very cute clue hunt in Spain.
- Exploring friendship and what it means to be friends.
Many thanks to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and TBR and Beyond Tours for a copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
I feel like books featuring characters with autism just living their normal lives is something that is still largely missing in literature. So I’m always excited when a book (often middle grade, I’ve noticed) steps in to try to fill that gap. Of course I was going to need to read Ellen Outside the Lines, and not just for the representation (though there is a lot of that, which I always love to see). The book sounded like a very heartfelt story, and it’s hard to resist
Ellen Outside the Lines is an eye-opening, empathy-building look at life with autism. The book is chock full of diversity—between LGBTQ+ characters, a trip to Spain, Judaism, and more—and the beauty (and struggle) of friendships.
I imagine that this book will mean so much to so many young readers who may not normally have the opportunity of seeing themselves reflected in a book. Plus, I’m always in favor of heteronormative/neurotypical people also reading books like this to understand that different people exist in various ways. Ultimately, this book was every bit as moving as I thought it would be, and the ending was absolutely *chef’s kiss*.
The representation in this book is absolutely top notch! I think a lot of marginalized readers will be able to see themselves reflected in this story.
The obvious one, of course, is that Ellen is autistic, and the story is told from her point of view. It doesn’t just stop there, though (as if that’s not enough in and of itself). There are two queer characters (one male, one female) and a nonbinary character. Ellen’s family is Jewish. The group is currently in Spain on a class field trip, where they also learn about Catalonia and a little about the history of the region. So there is a lot going on in this book to love as far as representation goes.
Even if you don’t belong to any of these marginalized groups and can’t see yourself in the story, there’s a lot of great empathy-building things that young readers may not have known about or been introduced to, like the idea of being nonbinary, or that things in life (including gender) don’t need to be black or white.
“Mine,” I tell her.
Beside me, Abba looks thoughtful. “Although now that it’s Ellen, maybe I should’ve changed it to Shelach, which means—”
“—yours,” I finish.
“I adore that,” Laurel tells me. “It’s like you and your dad have a secret language.”
Ellen has autism, and her narrative is both eye-opening and utterly relatable, while still showing the uniqueness of living with autism.
There are definitely things I take for granted that Ellen struggled with, like being able to walk through a crowded plaza without feeling overstimulated and having a panic attack. There are a lot of little moments that will likely make readers stop and think about their own experience and how it differs from Ellen, and that’s great. Plus, I love how Ellen’s narrative will likely introduce readers to new concepts they didn’t know about, like how stimming helps her better handle her emotions or that noise-cancelling headphones can help her from being overstimulated in crowds.
More than anything, I love how supportive the people around Ellen are. She’s different, yes, but there’s absolutely nothing at all wrong with that. This really highlights the difference between Ellen’s friends and the other people she’s around. Her friends want what’s best for her, whereas when she’s not with her friends, Ellen’s very self-conscious about what others will think of her if she’s wearing her headphones, etc. It’s a stark reminder that the way you treat others can make a huge difference to them!
I shake my head. I only own a few, and they hang in the deepest part of my closet, behind last year’s Purim costume.
“But don’t you want to dress up nice and all?”
I repeat her words in my head, but I still don’t understand. “Why? We see these people every day in school.”
Ellen struggles with understanding friendship (and don’t we all, to some extent?!). Throughout the book, she’s coming to grips about what it means when friends grow apart and how to make new friends.
I want to say, right up front, that Ellen makes mistakes. Some big ones, some small ones. But regardless, she messes up. And oh how refreshing that is, because she learns from them! Friendship is a lot of trial and error and confusion, as Ellen is quickly finding out. I suspect that the target audience for this will be able to relate to the struggle to define healthy friendships and the idea of sometimes growing out of friendships. It’s definitely a time of life when this is bound to happen, whether they want it to or not, which makes Ellen’s struggle all the more relatable.
It’s also sometimes hard to know how to be a friend. Especially for Ellen, who doesn’t always understand social cues. I just loved the entire narrative around this, as it raises a lot of important lessons about friendship!
“What’re those for?”
“Nothing clue-related. I just made them gender neutral.”
“Like the Spanish version of they, their, and them?”
“Sorta. You know how words that describe women usually end in -as, and for men it’s -os?”
“Yes.” I learned this in Spanish last year.
“Well, the @ sign with an s at the end is the gender-neutral version you can use for nonbinary people, or just groups in general. Some people use an x instead—like they’d say Latinx instead of Latino or Latina—but I think the @ sign is more fun to write.”
This squad is absolutely adorable, each with their own personalities and struggles. They’re even more adorable as they navigate learning how to work together to solve the scavenger hunt clues, each bringing their own thing to the table.
There’s Isa, who is nonbinary and just fierce in general. They are extremely loyal and supportive to their friends, which is very reassuring. They’re also very diligent about the fact that people can be different and those differences should be celebrated. I loved Isa for their openness and acceptance, which is a very refreshing quality in a character.
Then there are the boys, Gibs and Andy, who are entirely characters unto themselves. They’re silly and joke around, but they’re also very supportive and understanding. Plus, they’re funny, which is always a win. I definitely related to Gibs, who hates early morning wake-up calls (because duh) and enjoys cool lizard stuffed animals. Hard to go wrong with that.
I loved seeing Ellen, Gibs, Andy, and Isa work together on the scavenger hunt. They all bring something unique to the group while still supporting each other, even when they make mistakes and misunderstand a clue. It’s an absolutely fantastic group dynamic that I really enjoyed.
Then there’s Laurel, who used to be Ellen’s best friend but has been growing distant lately. Ellen is desperately trying to keep their friendship together, even while it’s changing and Laurel is finding new people to hang out with. Laurel herself is stuck between two worlds and trying to understand what it means to be a friend.
“I have an important announcement.” We all look at him, and he flicks the stuffed animal’s tag. “According to this, my lizard has a name: El Drac.”
“What’s it mean?” Andy asks.
“Who knows?” Gibs shrugs. “But that’s what he should be called from here on out.”
“I hope you know you’re a total weirdo,” Isa tells him.
“A weirdo who now owns a very cool lizard stuffed animal.”
I want to mention how utterly adorable Ellen’s relationship with her parents is. I love it, and I want to see more of this in middle grade!
Ellen’s father, Abba, goes to Spain with her as a chaperone, so he has a decent sized role in the book. Not only is Abba a strong support system for Ellen when she finds herself struggling or getting overwhelmed, but he also pushes her to try new things and see from other people’s perspectives. He’s a freaking top-notch parent, and extremely patient and understanding. Best of all, Ellen knows she can go to him for help or support when she needs it.
The same applies for her mother, even though she has a smaller role in the story, being half a world away. It’s clear that they’re all close, though, and they provide a solid support system for Ellen.
There are a lot of anti-parent or anti-adult tropes in middle grade, so I always love to see active, supportive parents portrayed in middle grade. I feel like that’s something that tends to be overlooked, even though it’s so important for middle grade readers to know that we aren’t always the enemy!
“Not exactly.” Mom chuckles. “But . . . actually, just a minute.”
She disappears, then returns a second later. “Ta-da!”
She holds up something small, green, and spiky. “His name is David.”
Abba leans closer to the screen. “Is that—”
“A cactus?” I squint at it.
Mom nods, her hair swishing around her chin.
“Miriam,” Abba says. “I don’t mean to be negative, but do you remember what happened the last time you got a plant?”
“Vincent the fern,” I murmur, remembering the little plant that once sat on our kitchen windowsill. “May his memory be a blessing.”
In some ways, I think this book is trying to do a little too much, and all the wonderful things kept getting buried under other wonderful things, until it became a little overwhelming and felt like it lost focus a little bit.
Let me be clear: representation is fantastic. I will forever and always be a proponent of it, along with the fact that people are multiple things. They don’t fit in little clear-cut boxes. A person can be autistic, queer, nonbinary, and Jewish all at once, and that’s a beautiful thing.
However, in this case, I didn’t feel like the overlap was done in an easy-to-follow way. Since the book is told from Ellen’s perspective, her experience with autism is front and center and incredibly eye-opening—or it was for me, as someone who doesn’t have autism. I loved the incorporation of her family’s religion (Judaism) as just an everyday part of her life: needing to be careful what to eat due to dietary restrictions, taking into account the Shabbat and restrictions on technology, etc. Those were exceptionally done! I loved all the LGBTQ+ rep, too, of course. Super important.
However, there were quite a few times when the representation felt like it crossed over into preachiness and sort of drowned out the rest of the story. Remember, all of this is happening within the context of the underlying story of a class trip to Spain, learning Spanish, solving clues, and figuring out what it means to be a good friend. Alongside all that, we also have: discussions about pronouns (in multiple languages), how to be gender neutral in speech, introduction to the concept of being nonbinary, two characters coming out as gay/lesbian, a discussion about how people practice the same religion differently, the idea of being kosher, discussions about Catalan and a brief introduction to the history and conflict within Spain, a Pride parade, etc. All of these are super important things, but they sort of drowned each other out and derailed the story a little for me. Parts of this were done so well, like the incorporation of Ellen’s autism and her religion, that it really stood out to me when things were done a bit heavy-handedly. I felt pulled in so many directions that I sometimes forgot what the plot was doing.
Of course, this was just my experience, as a reader with ADHD and an already heavily taxed attention span, so it may have just been me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Your mileage may vary.
About A.J. Sass
A.J. Sass (he/they) is an author, editor, and competitive figure skater who is interested in how intersections of identity, neurodiversity, and allyship can impact story narratives. He is the author of Ana on the Edge, a Booklist Editors’ Choice 2020 and ALA 2021 Rainbow Book List Top 10 for Young Readers selection, and Ellen Outside the Lines(Little, Brown, 2022), the co-author of Camp QUILTBAG* with Nicole Melleby (Algonquin, 2023), as well as a contributor to the This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us (Knopf) and Allies: Real Talk about Showing Up, Screwing Up, and Trying Again (DK US & UK) anthologies. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his boyfriend and two cats who act like dogs.
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This sounds cute! Books that promote empathy are always a good thing.
Nicole+@+BookWyrm+Knits recently posted…#PondathonII ~ Tea Time Companion Quest
Yes! I feel like this wasn’t so much a thing when I was a kid? So I love that this is a trend now.
Great review, I loved reading your thoughts Sammie! xx
Thanks, Ellie!