Meet Me on Mercer Street
by Booki Vivat
Graphic Novel
Realistic Fiction
* * * Stars (Pretty good)
Kacie goes away for the summer and when she comes home to Mercer Street she discovers her best friend Nisha has moved away and Nisha’s dad’s convenience store has been turned into a fancy modern Smart shop. Kacie is an artist and is constantly drawing what she sees, so she documents a lot of what’s going on in her neighborhood. There are a lot of changes and folks are stressed out because of them. Rents are going up and developers are talking about transforming the street into something unrecognizable. They may force a lot of the family/independently owned businesses out. Kacie wants to save Mercer Street and, although it’s not clear if she will be successful, she does help plan a huge block party that brings everyone together (except for maybe the Smart shop worker, who isn’t very friendly or community-oriented). While it’s a little weird that Nisha disappears off the face of the earth (except maybe not? Kacie manages to get a letter to her at the very end of the book after weeks of basically believing she has vanished), it is heartening to watch Kacie come to the conclusion that her neighborhood is special and important and worth preserving. For 5th grade +.
Reviewed by YA Librarian
