Welcome back to Book Trailer of the Week—our weekly-ish series in which I spotlight a book trailer that you can show your kids or students.
This week, I’m highlighting what I’ve dubbed the multi-format soccer mystery of the summer! The multi-format novel is slowly becoming more popular in middle grade literature. It’s a style pioneered by authors such as Kate Messner (see Breakout and The Trouble with Heroes) and Claire Swinarski (What Happened to Rachel Riley?).
In these books, the storytelling happens in more than one format. Readers watch the plot unfold as text messages, emails, podcast transcripts, audio recordings, recipes, poetry, posters, blog posts, and more. It feels like the reader is experiencing the story with the characters and can create an immersive reading experience once readers get over the fact that the book isn’t in pure prose.
This week, I’m highlighting the trailer for Laurie Morrison’s Where Ella Went. In this absorbing mystery, members of a girls’ soccer team band together to figure out why their “perfect” beloved captain ditched the team—and left town to boot—just days before a pivotal game.
On the surface, this book is just a mystery with soccer scenes thrown in, but when you look more closely, you’ll see that there’s so much more on the table. Like everything Morrison writes, this book examines many relatable issues, from shame to perfectionism to ADHD and belonging. I fell hard for the well-drawn characters in this book and would read a whole series about each of these kids. This book is exceptional on audio with an incredible full-cast narration that includes unbelievably realistic sound effects. It was one of our book club selections this summer and the kids loved discussing it!
This book is for the soccer fans, the “neurospicy bunch” (kids with ADHD will feel sooo seen in this story), the mystery lovers, and kids who love humor in their books. If they’ve never read a multi-format story, it will take them a minute to get acclimatized to the storytelling, so I really recommend starting with the audiobook, if at all possible. But before long, they’ll be hooked on all the Birchfield drama and gossip!
Have you read this book or any multi-format books? What did you think?
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