Cat, Sofia, Ana, and Mari are headed to high school. They’ll share lots of firsts, lots of gossip, and a book in Laekan Zea Kemp’s The Chismosas Only Book Club.
“I know how awkward yet precious that transitional period is in their lives,” Kemp says. As an ESL ninth and 10th grade teacher, she’s seen plenty of students bumble through the challenges of early adolescence and learned firsthand that they don’t always have fictional examples to guide and reassure them.
“There’s not a natural stepping stone for them between the middle grade books with a 12-year- old protagonist and the YA with a 16-, 17-year-old protagonist,” Kemp explains. “There’s a lot of life in between those two ages, and there’s a lot of formative experiences that are important and deserve to be talked about and explored.”
Building her curriculum, leading book clubs at school, and discussing with her students, Kemp also noticed another kind of reading gap.
“It is a hard thing to try to get a high schooler to either fall in love for the first time with reading or fall back in love with reading,” she says. “There [is] sort of this chasm around middle school where we tend to lose a lot of kids.” Around that time, kids are getting their first cellphone, their extracurriculars are picking up, and their grades are more and more important. “There’s just less time for pleasure reading, and there’s also a lot of things that give them a much stronger dopamine hit than their favorite book.”
Those algorithm-generated dopamine hits are proving to be more than a reason for finger wagging and grumbles. Recent neuroscience studies, shared with Congress, show that Gen Z is less cognitively capable than generations before. “Gen Z is the first generation to experience a cognitive decline like this,” Kemp points out. “Our kids should always be smarter than we are, and so it’s a big concern.”
The Mexican American author’s entertaining romp through freshman year doesn’t dwell on these concerns or scare kids into reading. Quite the opposite, her bubbly and blustering relatable characters, inspired by her own students, spin a charming tale of navigating friendship, family drama, and coming of age in English and Spanish, with illustrations from Heidi Moreno.
Where They Read: Cedar Park Public Library
“It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous building with a great outdoor area and walking trails,” says Kemp. “When it’s not too hot, there’s plenty of shade to read outside and if it’s too hot, it’s also really beautiful inside the library.”
What to Read Next
New beginnings at school also spark reinvention for 13-year-old Lacey in Rebecca Bendheim’s debut middle grade novel, When You’re Brave Enough. Published in April, this heartfelt tale traces Lacey’s move from Austin to Rhode Island and the challenges of making new friends, keeping old ones, navigating first crushes, and coming out.
What the Austin Chronicle Staff Is Reading This Summer
Amanda Eyre Ward’s Latest Book Follows a Family’s Complicated Journey
Motherhood, Mystery, and Pole Dancing Combine in Last Night Was Killer
Journalist Lauren Hough Writes Her Own On the Road
Zell Miller III Shares His First Book as Austin’s Indigenous Offspring
Summer Reading Roundup
This article appears in June 26 • 2026.
