WE love Tanya Lloyd Kyi. Her stories are so relatable with excellent voice. Emily Posts is her new middle grade novel perfect for today’s middle schoolers.

Emily is a grade eight student and the producer of her school podcast. She’s also an aspiring environmental influencer. Not only do her plans get derailed when a new girl turns up in class but she has also just recently moved in with her mother’s boyfriend and his absolute tornado of a son. When things go wrong, she takes inspiration from her namesake Emily Post and tries to approach her problem solving with poise and etiquette but when she is censored by the school principal, she decides she needs to take a different approach.

Tanya Lloyd Kyi is appealing directly to today’s generation of middle schoolers in this brilliant new story. By including podcasting and social media influencing she is hooking in today’s middle schooler. The story also has universal appeal. So many of the experiences that Emily faces are universal, we all experience or have experienced the same things as we navigate this tumultuous time in a young person’s life. Friendship bumps and bruises, crushes, family dynamics are all totally universal. They are things that middle schoolers have been experiencing since the dawn of time. I love how the middle schoolers in this story are climate activists and using their power on social media and the digital age to make a difference in their community. 

This book is a trip between two very different eras. While the children in the story live in the digital age, there is a lot of reference to Emily Post and and the late 1800s and early 1900s. Tanya Lloyd Kyi shows readers that while we can use today’s technology for the better, when we look back to the past, there are valuable lessons to learn and retain.