With Becoming Brianna, Libenson gives her fans a spot-on depiction of the weird, funny, sharp wisdom of a truly likable middle school girl.īecoming Brianna is a conventional story of a typical tween girl who happens to be Jewish. She causes a falling out with her best friend, but when they make up, Brianna values their friendship even more. She’s not sure she wants to have a bat mitzvah at first, but she’s proud and relieved once it’s over. Brianna is everything a middle schooler could want in a narrator: she’s honest, smart, awkward, and totally relatable. Not quite a graphic novel, Becoming Brianna is a heavily illustrated book that middle grade readers will be able to navigate with ease.

Interspersed with these chapters are scenes from the bat mitzvah day itself, told through comic-like illustrations of Brianna panicking about forgetting her Hebrew and screwing up her speech. From there, narrator Brianna moves eight months back in time and chronicles her harrowing friendship struggles, overwhelming bat mitzvah preparations, and bickering divorced parents, all leading up to that moment behind the curtain.

Brianna’s bat mitzvah ceremony is about to begin.

She’s so anxious, in fact, that she imagines herself tied to railroad tracks as a train approaches. The book opens with a prologue: 13-year-old Brianna nervously steps out from behind a curtain for some kind of performance. Becoming Brianna is the fourth book in author/illustrator Terri Libenson’s Emmie & Friends series and the first book of the series to focus solely on a Jewish main character.

Becoming brianna book