SATA

• The Song of Us Katherine Tegen Books (New York, NY), 2023
• 13 Ways to Say Goodbye Harper (New York, NY), 2025

1. 13 ways to say goodbye LCCN 2024949579 Type of material Book Personal name Fussner, Kate, author. Main title 13 ways to say goodbye / Kate Fussner. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2025] Description 298 pages ; 22 cm ISBN 9780063256989 (hardcover) 0063256983 CALL NUMBER Not available Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. The song of us LCCN 2023930007 Type of material Book Personal name Fussner, Kate, author. Main title The song of us / Kate Fussner. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York, NY : Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2023] ©2023 Description 354 pages ; 22 cm ISBN 9780063256941 (hardcover) 0063256940 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER PZ7.5.F87 So 2023 FT MEADE Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Kate Fussner website - https://www.katefussner.com/

  Hi! I’m Kate, a novelist, teacher, and accidental poet, and the author of THE SONG OF US and 13 WAYS TO SAY GOODBYE.

  Kate Fussner writes books for young people and bakes the perfect chocolate chip cookie.
  Her debut middle grade novel, “The Song of Us” will be published by Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins in Summer 2023. You can read the deal announcement here! A queer in-verse retelling of “Orpheus and Eurydice,” Fussner’s debut follows the story of two middle school girls learning to love each other and themselves as they fight not to lose one another.
  Kate holds her B.A. from Vassar College, her M.Ed. from University of Massachusetts Boston, and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing for Young People from Lesley University. She is the recipient of the W.K. Rose Fellowship from Vassar College (2022). After over a decade of teaching English for the Boston Public Schools, Kate now spends her life writing books, delighting her wonderful wife with homemade baked goods, and walking her dramatic dog, Weasley.
  Kate is represented by Eric Smith at Neighborhood Literary. Her writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and elsewhere.

  Short Bio:

  Kate Fussner is a novelist, teacher, and accidental poet living in Massachusetts with her wife and dramatic dog. When not reading or writing, Kate can be found baking, spending time with her family, or singing her favorite musicals. Kate believes in the power of a good laugh and a good cry, and hopes her stories will provide readers with both. Her debut novel, The Song of Us, was published with HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books in May 2023.

  Longer Bio:

  Kate Fussner is a novelist, teacher, and accidental poet living in Massachusetts with her wife and dramatic dog. She holds her B.A. in English from Vassar College, her M.Ed. from UMass Boston/Boston Teacher Residency, and her M.F.A. in Writing for Young People from Lesley University. Kate spent more than a decade teaching English for grades 6-12 for Boston Public Schools, where she created and implemented choice-based curriculum for her students, helping all students find joy in reading. Her partnership with her school’s teacher-librarian to build a school-wide culture of reading was the focus of several BPS professional developments and the BostonEd Talks in 2019. When not reading or writing, Kate can be found baking, spending time with her family, or singing her favorite musicals. Kate believes in the power of a good laugh and a good cry, and hopes her stories will provide readers with both. Her debut novel, The Song of Us, was published with HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books in May 2023.

  Social Media:

  Twitter: @katefussner

  Instagram: @kafussner

  Facebook: Kate Fussner

  TikTok: I’m not that fancy yet.

• Dead Darlings - https://www.deaddarlings.com/katefussner-talks-debut-novel-in-verse-song/

  Kate Fussner Talks About Her Debut Novel-In-Verse, The Song of Us
  Cameron Dryden / June 1, 2023 / 1 comment

  Photo credit: Cameron Dryden

  A “verse novel”, or “novel in verse”, is a novel-length narrative told via poetry. It also happens to be one of literature’s fastest-growing categories, extremely popular with young readers. The Song of Us is Kate Fussner’s debut novel in verse, a Middle Grade love story between two seventh-grade girls, mirroring the Greek romantic tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. The protagonists must learn to love themselves and one another, and to fight for one another. The novel’s first-person language is fresh; the lovers’ despair, heart-rending; and its visual poetry, captivating.

  I spoke with Kate, a former Grubstreet student and former English teacher to Boston Public Schools middle and high school students, to learn more about the medium and how she stumbled into it.

  Cam: Where’d you get the idea for this approach?

  Kate: My students loved verse novels. They seemed less intimidated by the novels’ size and flew through them. I had been working on a prose novel for a couple of years and my mentor encouraged me to take a break and try something else. And I had this idea: an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling in middle school, and it had to be in verse.

  Why you think verse novels have been so popular with your students?

  Many students are drawn to stories, but technology has made it far easier to access content in small bites. Technology has changed our relationship to the length of what we expect. It’s changed how consume stories, like I might want to binge a whole TV show this weekend. A student would tell me, I’m gonna watch this whole thing. They want to consume fast. Novels in verse are approachable, although they require complex thinking on the reader’s part.

  Why did you decide to write this particular book?

  I love teaching middle school. There’s something so incredible, imaginative, wild, and weird about 7th grade. Some students are starting to think about going to parties, vaping, and sneaking out of the house. Others in the same class are wearing Disney backpacks, still very much connected to that younger childhood space. I find it beautiful and fascinating to have the imagination of childhood and the uncertainty of adolescence settling in at the same time. And now so many more stories are being told outside of the white, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian-American, middle class family perspective. I was really moved by what I was seeing in children’s literature and wanted to be a part of it.

  I noticed that we have two mutual friends who’ve taught in the Boston Public Schools: Neema Avashia and Dr. Kandice Sumner. What have they meant to your writing journey?

  Neema’s one of my closest friends. Very early on in my teaching at McCormick Middle School, I connected with her because she was the teacher to go to if you were having trouble figuring out what you were doing. Neema published Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place, last year. I’m very grateful for how she’s been a mentor to me. Kandice and I met working at Fenway High School. She was one of my first and fiercest friends there and has remained so. We both were working on writing projects, so we FaceTime’d on our computers for accountability. She really helped me stay grounded during the pandemic.

  What’s some of the best advice you received on writing your novel in verse?

  In my MFA program at Leslie University, Jason Reynolds told me every poem needed to have its own punch, a strong entry and strong exit, and that it needed to be able to stand by itself as a poem as well as inform the larger story. And so that felt like every task was figuring how do I get into this poem, how do I get out of it, and how do I make sure it can stand on its own.

  I can’t right now imagine trying to write a novel in poetry. With your publisher’s permission, I included the following sample of the visual poetry from your book:

  I’m so impressed! How much poetry have you written?

  The last time I wrote poetry was in high school! I consider myself an accidental poet. I never studied it in college but I always loved playing with words. When I realized that writing a novel in verse was like 350 pages of playing with language, the idea became so much more exciting and satisfying. It became like a puzzle. And I just didn’t want to stop working on it. I’m writing two other novels in verse because I’m so excited by the form.

  What advice would you offer novelists?

  There’s something about this story that seemed so outside of my wheelhouse that it seemed silly to even try because I’d never written a novel in verse. I’d never written for a middle grade audience. I thoroughly felt I had no idea what I was doing. Because I gave myself permission to do it anyway, I got so much more out of it, almost because the thought was so absurd. It can’t possibly work. I think I found my way through it because I let myself try anyway. I want to encourage other writers to try out that idea that seems too far-fetched to work, and to see what happens when we take ourselves a little less seriously for the sake of playing with new ideas.

  With all the book bans, do you worry about how The Song of Us will be received?

  Have you read my book? (both laugh) Yeah, it’s unfortunate, but it’s the reality of publishing a queer kid lit book right now.

  But of course, we can’t worry too much about such things. We can only write the stories we’ve been given.

  The fact of the matter is, we end up with book bans because books are powerful. Books are important. I have to trust my book will find its way to kids who need it. At times, it’s both demoralizing and fueling. It says books are important, stories do matter. Don’t let what others think get to you when you sit down and write.

  Kate Fussner believes in the joy of reading, and in communicating that joy to young students and their teachers after teaching middle and high school English in the Boston Public Schools for 10 years. The Song of Us is her debut middle grade novel. Kate received the W.K. Rose Fellowship from Vassar College in 2022 and her writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and elsewhere. Find out more at www.katefussner.com or on Twitter (@katefussner), Facebook, or Instagram (@kafussner).

• Cambridge Common Writers - https://cambridgecommonwriters.org/spotlight-series-pride-month-kate-fussner/

  Spotlight Series: Pride Month – Kate Fussner

  Categories:

  Interview
  The Lesley MFA Program in Creative Writing opened up new avenues for many of us in exploring ourselves and our writing. WFYP alum Kate Fussner talks about how her mentors encouraged her to start writing in verse, which led to the publication of her upcoming book, The Song of Us. Read on to learn more about her writing journey!

  KATE FUSSNER – WRITING FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, JUNE 2021

  KATE FUSSNER is a novelist, teacher, and accidental poet living in Massachusetts with her wife and dramatic dog. When not reading or writing, Kate can be found baking, spending time with her family, or singing her favorite musicals. Kate believes in the power of a good laugh and a good cry, and hopes her stories will provide readers with both. Her debut novel, The Song of Us, will be published in Summer 2023 by HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books. Her writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, WBUR’s Cognoscenti (x , x), and elsewhere.

  Visit her Author Website

  Interviewed By
  Michael Mercurio
  In your bio on the CCW site you mention that you teach high school English, which seems like a perfectly complementary career for a writer of YA fiction. Which came first for you, the desire to write, or the desire to teach?

  I think my earliest desire was to be a reader. I devoured books as a kid, and wondered how I might create a life for myself that was all about reading. By the time I got to high school, I realized that I could spend my life reading the most number of books if I became an English teacher and writer. I was lucky enough as a teen to have fantastic, talented, openly queer, joyful English teachers who modeled for me great teaching and lit a fire in me to tell my own stories. While I no longer teach, I learned from my students that there was a great boom in the publishing industry for high-quality MG and YA literature, and a great need for it that was finally being fulfilled.

  Thanks for sharing that anecdote about your own openly queer & joyful English teachers, and how having such support and encouragement helped affirm your own trajectory. And it’s interesting to know that your own students also influenced your understanding of the MG and YA landscape!

  You’re represented by an agent — that’s incredibly exciting! It’s also baffling to a poet like me. Would you tell us a little bit about what the relationship with an agent is like?

  My agent, Eric Smith at P.S. Literary, is a dream agent for me. He’s deeply knowledgeable about the industry from both the agenting side and author side. He’s made it clear from the very start that he’s ready to champion my work and that he understands the importance of getting queer books on the shelves. I started querying shortly after I turned in my thesis at Lesley, and cold queried him with my thesis manuscript (along with about 10 other agents). I knew from my first phone call with Eric that his energy, kindness, and joy for my writing meant that he was the right person to represent me. I signed with him right before my graduation from Lesley, and shortly after we began submitting my work to editors. In the fall of 2021, we received a couple offers and I signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen books to publish two middle grade books. My first book, which was my thesis, The Song of Us, will be published in Summer 2023. A queer novel-in-verse, The Song of Us is a modern day adaptation of the Greek myth “Orpheus and Eurydice” starring two seventh grade girls destined to love and lose each other as they learn to love themselves. My second book will follow in Summer 2024.

  Kate at her desk signing her first contract with HarperCollins.
  The Song Of Us sounds like it draws together many threads — ancient Greek myth, queerness, the challenges of seventh grade, and the internal psychodrama of finding oneself while trying not to lose someone else — and, on top of that, it’s a novel-in-verse. I hope you don’t mind, but I have a bunch of questions about this.

  How did this marvelous assemblage of form and content and theme come about?

  The Song Of Us was inspired by a challenge from my mentor, Tracey Baptiste. At the end of my semester working with her, as I geared up for my third residency, Tracey’s final challenge to me was to take a break from the novel I’d drafted during my first two semesters. She insisted I give the book some space to breathe. She wanted all the WFYP students to leave with at least two manuscripts, ideally for different age groups. But I came to Lesley to write YA! And I knew the story I wanted to tell! Why couldn’t I just stick with it? Tracey insisted that I try something new. At first, I was furious. I stomped around my apartment for about forty-five minutes (my wife loves this part of the story because I very rarely get mad). But as I settled into a yoga session, I cleared my mind and the idea appeared: Orpheus and Eurydice, but make it queer, middle school, and make sure Eurydice has her own full story. It always frustrated me that Eurydice’s role in the story was to get married and die. Her journey to the Underworld and back also deserved its own story! So I knew I wanted it to be two points of view, two full story arcs, right away. Middle School seemed like the perfect setting for the Underworld, and each girl seemed poised to learn lessons about loving others and loving themselves throughout the journey.

  HA! That’s an incredible story, and it sounds like Tracey knew exactly what she was doing with that challenge, even if she didn’t know exactly what was waiting to emerge after a good stomp-around and some yoga. Have you found ways to continue the practice of challenging yourself after Lesley, or do you miss the mentor/mentee relationship?

  Of course I miss my mentor/mentee relationship with the Lesley faculty! The Lesley WFYP faculty are some of the best writer-teachers I have ever worked with. As a former teacher, I know that great writers don’t always make great teachers, but I did not feel this way ever about the WFYP faculty. Their mentorship and teaching were invaluable. By virtue of signing a two-book deal, I have found my new challenge: writing under contract. I am grateful to have an agent and editor, both of whom are generous with their time and knowledge, to guide me through this next stage of my writing career. In addition to working on my novels, I spend time learning about the industry and applying for additional grant funding so that I can continue this full-time writing life as much as possible. Thanks to an unannounced grant, I will spend the next year working on additional writing projects. I have found an incredible KidLit writing group that supports and challenges me to keep pushing myself as a writer. I encourage everyone after Lesley to find their writing community that helps fuel them!

  MFA Writing Faculty in Writing for Young People Tracey Baptiste
  Are there half-finished prose drafts that just didn’t click, or was it always going to be in verse?

  Amazingly, I also knew right away I wanted the story to be in verse. I can’t explain it, because I had never seriously written poetry before. But every draft, from the beginning, was in verse. I had a lot to learn about how to craft my earliest draft into actual poetry, but my time working with Jason Reynolds completely transformed how I think about writing. Jason taught me that so much about poetry is about playing with and loving words. When I could see that that was the work, I knew it was the right direction for this story and for my writing. I like to think of myself as an accidental poet. I never set out to write poetry, but now that I have been writing verse-novels, I feel like I’ve found I’m at home in poetry in a way I never expected.

  Did you do much research to inform the book? If so, how and where did you do the research?

  Along with reading several versions of Orpheus and Eurydice, I read a lot of poetry with a new purpose. I wanted to figure out how verse novelists world-build and create the more traditional aspects of novels; I needed to understand how setting, personality traits, dialogue, and character development could be communicated through poetry without weighing the poems down. I wanted to make sure that every single poem could stand as a poem and further the plot. This required reading a lot of verse novels to figure out what made the stories move forward and made the poetry sing.

  In addition to your YA writing, you’ve published several pieces in WBUR’s Cognoscenti, including a tremendously funny one about becoming a Masshole. Where are you from originally, and have you always written short-form humorous pieces, or is that something more recent?

  I was born in Philadelphia and grew up on both sides of the Delaware River, first in South Jersey and then in Narberth, PA. My first love as a writer was personal essays, both humorous and serious, and that was my main focus as a writer until my late twenties. All of my college writing classes were for narrative nonfiction, and I was lucky enough to study with Kiese Laymon and Paul Russell. They taught me a lot about telling truth and writing queer stories. As a full-time teacher, I didn’t have a ton of time to write; writing and publishing personal essays became a good way to build my habits as a writer. I took classes at GrubStreet and spent part of one summer at Kenyon College, studying flash nonfiction with Dinty Moore of Brevity. I didn’t start seriously considering writing fiction and writing for young people until I had my first idea for a YA novel in 2017.

  I admire your tenacity in terms of pursuing writing throughout your life, and I’m impressed with the fluency with which you work across genres. Since one of the strengths of the Lesley program is its interdisciplinarity, I’d love to hear about any experiences you had where a non-genre seminar or an interdisciplinary studies course helped you refine your thinking about your own writing.

  Lesley’s interdisciplinary program allowed me to continue to explore my interests across genres while refining my skills in writing for young people. Each of my I.S. programs (Intro to Graphic Novels, an editorial assistantship with Brevity flash nonfiction literary magazine, and Pitch Perfect) deepened my understanding of writing and inspired me to continue experimenting. Intro to Graphic Novels taught me about the incredible relationship between words and images, and taught me to try out forms even when I worry I might not be “good” at them. I left my creative comfort zone and learned that creative risks can be rewarding. Although Intro to Graphic Novels only focused on GN, I think the fact that I tried something so outside my comfort zone gave me the courage to try verse novels, too.

  My decision to take Pitch Perfect came from my interest in wanting to understand more about the publishing industry and how to position a story in the market. I knew nothing about querying, and my goal was to leave the program ready to query a manuscript. What I found in Pitch Perfect was much more than industry knowledge: I came to know The Song of Us even better than when I began the course. The course helped me refine my story for others and for myself. By the end of the course, I felt confident that I had the clearest explanations and strongest queries ready to go for agents to see. In the end, it is the query materials that I wrote in Pitch Perfect that helped land me my agent.

  Kate posing with her dog, Mrs. Weasley.
  You certainly knew how to choose your IS courses! It sounds like they complemented your creative and professional development in the program, and I’m fascinated by your experience with Pitch Perfect. It makes total sense that the course would walk you through looking at The Song of Us from a different perspective, but I wouldn’t have realized it before you said it.

  As a poet myself, it makes me very happy to know that Jason was able to guide you into the practice of poetry. There’s a lot of mystique about it, and poets are very often guilty of inflating that mystique, but it really is a love of playing with words. Do you think you’ll write more verse-novels, or try your hand at free-standing poems?

  At the moment, I am working on a second middle grade verse novel. I have not yet tried my hand at free-standing poems. But if there’s anything I learned from my time at Lesley, it’s that I should not stop myself from trying something new as a writer. Leaving my comfort zone seems to be the best way to grow.

  The more you talk about your book, the more eager I am to read it! It also sounds like you could turn your research and expertise into a seminar — or a workshop series! Do you think you’d like to return to teaching someday in some capacity, even if not back at the high school level?

  I would love to teach again, perhaps in a workshop series for teens or adults, or at the undergrad/graduate level. Eventually I would love to teach in a program like Lesley’s, because I think my experience as a teacher has prepared me for both seminar-style and mentorship-style teaching. This semester, I’m serving as a mentor for an un-agented writer in the Diverse Voices Mentorship program. I am working with one student closely as she revises her verse-novel and prepares the materials necessary for querying. I love sharing what I have learned with others, and hope that this mentorship is the first of many opportunities to help pave the way for new voices in publishing.

  Will you be doing a book tour for The Song of Us? If you come to Western MA I’ll bring everyone I know to the reading…

  I will definitely do a book tour when The Song of Us releases in 2023, hopefully with launches in both Boston and Philadelphia (where I’m originally from). I’m not opposed to Western, MA but I will strategically plan where to go based on where I know I can easily connect with readers and spread the word about my book!

Fussner, Kate THE SONG OF US Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (Children's None) $19.99 5, 30 ISBN: 9780063256941

Two seventh grade Boston girls meet in poetry club, fall in love, fight, and find their way back to each other in this verse novel.

Even though "Love at First Sight is not a thing," Olivia and new girl Eden quickly become friends and then more. But Eden, whose mom has left and whose dad is homophobic, wants to keep their relationship secret. Eden also becomes part of a tightknit group of girls she names the Crash. After one of their parties, Olivia hurls a misogynistic slur at Eden and breaks up with her. Regretful, Olivia later comes up with a scheme to win Eden back: a poetry night where she will perform a poem of apology. Both girls are largely without supportive adult guidance--Olivia's mother has depression, and her avoidant dad works long hours--so they make mistakes and correct them as best they can, relying on poetry, music, and friends to fill in the gaps. Their personalities shine through their beautifully crafted poems, full of aches, worries, and joys. Three final poems, set a few months later, provide a coda and some closure. Olivia's poems are aligned left, Eden's are aligned right; drafts of Olivia's apology poems appear on lined paper in a spiral-bound notebook. Both girls are coded White; Olivia's best friend is trans.

Thirteen-year-old love at its finest. (Verse fiction. 11-14)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Fussner, Kate: THE SONG OF US." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A745234669/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=63d7cf80. Accessed 16 June 2025.

The Song of Us

by Kate Fussner

Middle School Tegen/HarperCollins 368 pp.

5/23 9780063256941 $19.99

e-book ed. 9780063256958 $10.99

In this verse-novel retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, seventh-grade girls Olivia and Eden fall in "like-like" at first sight. Soon, they're meeting up to kiss almost daily and professing their love. But their (secret) happiness doesn't last long. Eden falls in with a reckless crowd, and Olivia reacts with strong, hurtful words. The two are driven further and further apart, but Olivia sets out to reunite them on a quest involving poetry. The source material lends itself to the seriousness with which the protagonists take their situation--and beyond their romance and conflict, there are weighty elements at play, including Olivia's mother's depression and Eden's fear of her homophobic father. It all leads up to an ending that isn't perfectly happy, but one that gives hope to readers rooting for the two girls' connection. Poet Olivia's more deliberate voice ("I scramble to scribble / but my mind says wrong / to every word I write") is distinct from more impulsive music-lover Eden's ("This girl is / a power ballad: / bold, clever, all confidence / joy at full volume"); both are accessible and often impassioned. Hand to middle-school readers ready to be swept up in emotion. SHOSHANA FLAX

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Sources, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.hbook.com/magazine/default.asp
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Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Flax, Shoshana. "The Song of Us." The Horn Book Magazine, vol. 99, no. 4, July-Aug. 2023, pp. 109+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A758443010/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c5e6e0dc. Accessed 16 June 2025.

Fussner, Kate 13 WAYS TO SAY GOODBYE Harper/HarperCollins (Children's None) $18.99 3, 18 ISBN: 9780063256989

Feeling independent yet deeply alone, a girl uses her deceased sister's journal to help her move forward.

Until three years ago, Nina's family spent their summers in Paris, a delightful tradition that included happy memories and fun times with the ebullient Aunt Renee. But ever since her older sister Lily's death in a bike accident, Nina's parents have retreated into themselves, leaving Nina to try to find ways to ground herself. She hopes to find some peace with what happened by completing Lily's "13 Before 13" list prior to her own upcoming 13th birthday. Lily kissed someone and learned to bake before she died, but other items on the list remain undone, and one--"Take a selfie with theMona Lisa"--requires her to be in Paris. Aunt Renee enrolls Nina, a white-presenting American girl, in art classes and arranges for her co-worker's daughter Sylvie, who's Black, to be Nina's "nouvelle amie" and Métro guide. Nina finds her feelings for Sylvie blossoming into the possibility of more, and pursuing the tasks on Lily's list provides a springboard for her growth. The verse format and scenes in which Nina relives moments when Lily was alive suit the depth of Nina's feelings and her halting, uncertain progress through the aftereffects of Lily's death. The Parisian setting is authentically developed, and the pitch-perfect ending brings the plot full circle and allows for gentle closure for a summer crush.

A moving, sensitive exploration of healing in the wake of loss.(Verse fiction. 10-14)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Fussner, Kate: 13 WAYS TO SAY GOODBYE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A823102356/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=44828c18. Accessed 16 June 2025.

13 Ways to Say Goodbye

by Kate Fussner

Middle School Harper/HarperCollins 304 pp. 3/25 9780063256989 $19.99

In this introspective verse novel, American narrator Nina spends the summer with her aunt in Paris, as her whole family used to do regularly; the visits stopped three years earlier after Nina's older sister, Lily, died in a bicycle accident. Nina intends to complete Lily's unfinished "13 Before 13" list before her own thirteenth birthday at the end of the trip. As she crosses off items (which range from "eat a food I've never heard of before" to "first kiss"), visions of moments from her sister's life appear, revealing aspects of their not-always-perfect relationship. Lily complained that Nina was a copycat, and Nina's arc of finding what she needs now for herself is both poignant and hopeful. Those needs include more open discussion of the family's loss with her parents as well as openness about her attraction to other girls (and the summer includes the sweet, tentative beginnings of a romance with Sylvie, a girl in her art class). Accessible free verse keeps pages turning, with variations in line breaks and placement on the page helping to pace emotion and, especially, introduce the more fantastical moments. A touching portrait of a preteen in a particular, sad situation whose coming-of-age journey may resonate more broadly.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Sources, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.hbook.com/magazine/default.asp
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Flax, Shoshana. "13 Ways to Say Goodbye." The Horn Book Magazine, vol. 101, no. 3, May-June 2025, pp. 87+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A839824632/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e1ca99e8. Accessed 16 June 2025.

"Fussner, Kate: THE SONG OF US." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A745234669/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=63d7cf80. Accessed 16 June 2025. Flax, Shoshana. "The Song of Us." The Horn Book Magazine, vol. 99, no. 4, July-Aug. 2023, pp. 109+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A758443010/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c5e6e0dc. Accessed 16 June 2025. "Fussner, Kate: 13 WAYS TO SAY GOODBYE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A823102356/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=44828c18. Accessed 16 June 2025. Flax, Shoshana. "13 Ways to Say Goodbye." The Horn Book Magazine, vol. 101, no. 3, May-June 2025, pp. 87+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A839824632/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e1ca99e8. Accessed 16 June 2025.

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