Award Category
Logline or Premise
Bethany Brain tells herself that she's atypical and she likes it. The truth is, she doesn't like it at all. Where does Bethany fit in? Certainly not the seventh grade. With the help of her best friend Shelley, a dog named Thor, and an unexpected ally, Bethany finds the answer she's looking for.
Submission file
Comments
Cute!!
Love the start, and the writing's great.
Excellent and pitched just…
Excellent and pitched just at the right level.
Middle graders will love…
Middle graders will love this story, but from Shelley's dialogue, she seems a bit older.
Solid start, but try to…
Solid start, but try to reduce the number of adults in the opening pages, as your readers don't want to read about them. Focus on your main protagonists ASAP, so your target readership relates to what's going on.
A compelling start!
This is a comment from a publisher judge who asked us to post this comment:
A compelling start! We’d love to see refinement around the target age demographic, as well as a focus on the main character right off the bat. I’d also consider story over messaging for readers of this age. Yes, we adults want to give children uplifting messages, but children really just want a fantastic story. Consider it akin to hiding the vegetables in an otherwise sweet smoothie- to extend the metaphor, we found the vegetables here a little too obvious.great theme
I love the theme, although I think this MS could do well with a revision. Some of the sentences were a bit choppy, which disrupted the pace for me. I do empathize with the main character, so bringing her through a bit more via the voice of the piece/sentence structure could be a good direction for revision.