​Title: Focusedby Alyson Gerber, 978-1-338-18597-3-First Ed. April 2019, $16.99, 288 pp. 
Genre: Fiction/realistic fiction/ Bildungsroman  
Characters: The main character is Clea Adams, a 7thgrade girl who lives with ADHD. She has a passion for chess, but her ADHD continually gets in the way of her love for the game. She has her best friend, Red, who has a complex relationship with Clea. She also has a friend she makes through mutual love of chess and learning disabilities, Sanam. Dylan, a boy from Clea’s school could be seen as sort of the antagonist because of the relationship he has with Clea, he is one of those characters you cannot help but dislike, but still love for who he is.
Plot: Focused is about a girl named Clea Adams. A 7thgrader struggling to cope with her ADHD. Clea’s ADHD started to affect everything around her, making her fall behind in school, contributed to her clumsiness, affected her relationship with her family and friends, and nearly cost her the love she has for playing chess. After Clea was tested and diagnosed with ADHD, she finally had the answer she needed to get the help she needs to be successful. Everything distracted Clea, from a boy in her class having strong smelling cologne, to someone chewing gum, but once she got her diagnosis she learned how to cope. This story shows that neurodiversity is not a bad thing, its just a different sort of perspective. The book shows the entire process that one may go through to getting diagnosed, the identification step, testing, diagnosis, treatment, and aftermath. The most important aspect of it all is the aftermath, and how Clea copes with her diagnosis and how it changes how she views school. As mentioned, Clea is very gifted at chess, so a lot of the story revolves around her playing chess and different encounters she has while playing chess. I love the imagery of how Clea described medication for herself, rather than depicting it as a cure, she tells her therapist that it makes her ADHD smaller, less impactful, rather than being “cured”, which unfortunately is how a lot of people think ADHD ought to be dealt with. The story is resolved when Clea finds that she has made top 12 in chess, wrapping up on a positive note. I thoroughly enjoyed the sweet, light-hearted nature of this book, and really appreciate the representation that it gives for young women with ADHD, like myself.
Touchy Areas: There are really no touchy areas in this book, it is very child friendly. The only touchy issue would be about how hopeless Clea feels due to her ADHD, which could be a sensitive topic for some. 
Related Titles: 

1. “Braced”by Alyson Gerber, “My name’s Brain Brian” Jeanna Betancourt
2. Movies: Finding Dory, “Up” – specifically Dug, “How I Met Your Mother” – Barney Stinson
3. Music: The Witches rap in the musical, “Into the Woods”, “In the Flesh” Pink Floyd, “Polaroid” by Imagine Dragons
4. Poem: “The ADHD Poem” by IF The Poet
5. Classic Work: Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – a lot of people speculate that Holmes had ADHD.
6. Art: The Scream by Edvard Munch – when I see this piece of art it looks like how my own interpretation of my ADD would look.

Evaluation: I really enjoyed reading Focused, it was a very easy and quick read that would be great for anyone from 3rdgrade to 8thgrade, in my opinion. The reading is easy enough for a third grader to comprehend, but socially relevant enough to still be interesting to an 8thgrader. As a woman with ADD, I felt that had I had this book as a pre-teen, I would have found this book incredibly relatable and would have appreciated the representation in a book like this. I thought the book had a really good, positive message, and females with ADHD are very underrepresented in the media, as it is usually boys with ADHD that are written about and discussed, so this book is really important to me, and I am sure would make an impact on any girl that read this book. Focusedaccurately depicts a lot of the same struggles that I faced growing up, such as failing at schoolwork despite being smart enough to succeed, not being able to filter yourself, or help yourself from blurting out. Reading about how Clea deals with these struggles was all too real but watching her find herself in chess and start to succeed as a student was very heartwarming. From the first few pages I found myself rooting for Clea, maybe because I understand her internal struggle, but maybe because of how her character is written, simply put, it is impossible to not love her. I think this will resonate with young boys and girls living with ADHD, or potentially it could shed light to those without a learning disability about how to interact with students with ADHD, to provide a look into what it is like living with ADHD. Those who do not understand ADHD may not be very empathetic, so this book could provide valuable insight as to how the ADHD brain works, and how those of us living with ADD/ADHD operate. 
Reviewed by: Mikayla Chandler