My Life In The Fish Tank by Barbara Dee

Publisher: Aladdin
Expected Publication date: September 15th 2020
Pages: 320

In My Life In The Fish Tank, the reader gets to meet twelve year old  Zinnia ( Zinny )Manning. Zinnia's life is pretty normal, life at home until something serious happens with her older brother Gabriel. One day her parents get a call that Gabriel was involved in a car accident and is in hospital, but there is something secretive about what happens afterward, when her parents reveal to Zinny and her  sixteen-year-old sister, Scarlett, and her eight-year-old brother, Aiden, that Gabriel has been admitted to a mental hospital because his behavior on college and after the incident was wild and strange, and now it has been found out that Gabriel is bipolar. Her parents want to keep this as private as possible. Which means Zinny can't talk about it with her two best friends, who don't have a clue what is going on and why Zinny is acting this way.
Without realizing it too much, she is pushing her two best friends away because of what is happening at home, and it get's noticed by her school teacher. One teacher, Mr. Patrick, also the guidance counselor invites her to join The Lunch Club, a club for kids who have problems at home or have no or little friends at school. But she thinks it is just a club for weird kids, it isn't where she belong right, or because that her brother is crazy they might thing she is weird too?

She finds the place where she loves to be though in Mrs. Molina's class, her science teacher. Mrs. Moline feeds her interest in planting some seeds that she can grow in her own garden, which makes Zinny connect again with her mom who has been absent her life because of Gabriel, and starts a project on crayfish with the class.Mrs. Molina also supports Zinny to sign up for a marine biology summer camp. But there is so much happening at home with Gabriel and her parents who have their hands and minds fulltime on it, will Zinny be even able to attend? And will her life at home, and the health of her brother, ever be normal again?

As in her previous books, Barbara Dee does an amazing good job making serious topics understandable in her books for young readers. In this book the serious topic the main character has to deal with is mental illness of a family member and the impact it has on a family and school life. Zinny's life changes just in one minute, and it is hard for her and her parents on figuring how to deal with the whole situation. Is it better to talk about it, or to keep it secret? This is a topic many families in the same situation deal with.  And as a twelve year old, how do you talk with your friends about it, or is it better not to talk at all? Zinny does the last, and altough both choices has some pro's and cons, she almost loses her friends with not opening up to them, out of anxiety perhaps that Gabriel's situation it might backlash on her, which happens sadly in real life. It is lucky for Zinny though that she makes some new friends in the lunch club and finds a place where she belongs at Mrs. Molina's class. 
It was interesting and impressive to read how Zinny and her family dealth with it  all, and how during the story they started to find a little beginning way to cope, with the help of family therapy, and how in the end, things started to look a little better for Gabriel and how that impacted Zinny and the family for the better. It was beautifully written and everything was made perfectly understandable for young readers, and it was also very realistic. Hat off to Barbara Dee for another amazing great new book!!!