Dress Coded by Carrie Firestone

Molly is an 8th grader who is a "late bloomer"  but some of her friends have a more mature body type.  Molly gets angry when one of her friends, Olivia, is disciplined for breaking the dress code, and the 8th grade camp-out is canceled as a result.  Molly begins to notice that it is the more shapely girls who are always called to the office for dress code violation, while she can wear the same outfit and never be approached.  She starts a campaign to have the unfair dress code abolished, and in the process works through other issues both at home and at school.

I didn't love this book, but I didn't hate it. It was a pretty typical "girl finding courage to use her voice" book, and it was realistic and sympathetic enough.  There were really two issues in the book, the dress code issue and a situation where Molly's older brother was vaping and selling pods to younger kids, and causing major friction at home.  I thought the part about the vaping brother was engaging and timely, but the thing about the dress code seemed a bit whiny to me.  Yes, the administration was enforcing the dress code unfairly by focusing on shapely girls, while ignoring boys and more juvenile looking girls , but the existence of a dress code is not, in my mind, necessarily a bad thing.  The author focused on body shaming, but ignored the fact that eventually kids need to learn to dress appropriately.  You can't go through life in shorts and tank tops. I have had job applicants show up in ripped jeans or sweat pants and it is a deal breaker with me as an employer.  So when do you start teaching kids to wear appropriate clothes?  I don't think Jr. High is too early. Just because I disagree with the author doesn't mean it is a bad book, and I will probably recommend it to kids who like the social crusading kinds of stories. (2020, 320 p.)