Jiu-Jitsu Girl

This book is a perfect read for middle-graders; teaching important lessons about confidence, dealing with bullies and finding true friends.


Social developmental stages are all hard in their own way. When we are toddlers we have to learn that the world doesn't revolve around us. As young children we learn to include and get along with other children by finding compromises and showing patience. The years we enter puberty bring a whole lot of new challenges. We thought we'd learned by now how to make friends and all the sudden the rules have changed. Now it's all about status. It's about starting to find out who we are and what roles we will play later in life. Are we leaders, caretakers, followers etc. And it's hard when everyone tries to find that out at the same time.


Jiu-jitsu Girl follows one of these challenges in an authentic and relatable way. Angie moved to a new town and started at a new school. She's always been the invisible one but this is going to change. She will become popular and who is better to get her that status than the most popular girl in school, Olivia. What could possibly go wrong, right? Well, everything. And it definitely doesn't help that her mom signed her up for Jiu-jitsu which is the worst! Through a series of events Angie finds out what it feels like to be bullied, making a lot of mistakes and learning some important life lessons.


I loved how relatable the story was even though the title made it sound like not in a million years would I see myself in this story but I totally did. There is some amazing character development in this book. And a couple of scenes were so comedic I had to laugh out loud. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to any tween trying to figure out who they want to be.