COURAGE FOR BEGINNERS- Karen Harrington

Mysti Murphy is a not so typical middle school girl. She is a writer, who regularly narrates the scenes from her life.

Here is a girl riding a red bike through the streets of Paris, France. 

Mysti's mother is an agoraphobic who never leaves the house. Her father provides all the transportation, does the grocery shopping, etc.

Here is a girl winning the Nobel Prize for inventing a mobile orthodontist business that drives down neighborhood streets, and all the kids with crooked teeth chase after it and receive straight smiles. 

Her best friend, actually her only friend,  is Anibel Gomez, who is "size extra extra large" and who sleeps on stuffed animals on a broken waterbed.

Things change shortly before Mysti starts seventh grade. First, Anibel decides he wants to be one of the cool kids. Over the summer he loses weight, starts wearing a hat, becomes a "hipster" and tells Mysti that he is conducting a social experiment. H/e will still be her friend, but he just won't be nice to her at school.

Then Mysti's father falls out of a tree and suffers a traumatic brain injury.

Here is a sad, sad girl watcher her father drive away in an ambulance in the bright August sun. 

Mysti's father is hospitalized for several months, and she must cope with the reality of a mother with no means of meeting even the family's most basic needs,  a best friend who has become a bully, and the demands of middle school, including Texas history.

A terrific read, would make a great companion novel for kids who loved WONDER.