Blair Moon: How to be Cooler than the Moon by Ashleigh Mounser

Title: Blair Moon: How to be Cooler than the Moon

Author: Ashleigh Mounser

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: Ford Street Publishing

Published: 1^st October 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 225

Price: $18.95

Synopsis: Blair Moon’s blissful life in the nursing home is turned upside down when her mother enrols her at the local primary school. Blair isn’t too keen on trading bingo and bridge for handball, however, and soon sets her sights on becoming class president.

President of the entire world will have to wait!

~*~

Blair Moon has grown up in a nursing home. Her mother is the head nurse, and Blair has been home-schooled by some of the residents – that is, until she turns eleven and enters her final year of primary school. Blair’s older sister, who has just started university, has convinced their mother to send Blair to school a year early – she always knew she’d be going to school for high school, but not yet! Blair is convinced that her sister has coerced her mother into the bonkers scheme – surely she doesn’t need school? Yet when she enters school, Blair finds out that there are people who say no, who try to pull you down, and let’s face it – where your bingo and bridge skills are useful on the handball court. But Blair has her sights set on becoming class president and changing the school musical to be more feminist – can she do it, or will Blair learn what it means to be cool in ways she doesn’t expect?

Blair is at the age where many girls begin to question their confidence, but Blair has never been made to think she’s not as smart as she is. Her ego has been fed, and she’s never had to deal with how other people see her in negative ways. So going to school tests her, because she has to face the fact that she won’t be praised by everyone, and that her little idiosyncrasies will make people think she’s a bit odd. When Blair meets Melanie, she is even more determined to become cool and be voted class president, and enlists her neighbour, Poppy, to help manage her campaign. Yet as Blair makes more and more demands, she fails to see that she’s not really making friends. And she must learn how to be herself, but also be someone who people can relate to – and also learn that she can’t always have things her way – that compromise is how the world works, as opposed to the world she has grown up in. Blair had a huge learning curve, and one that I think was written well, as it took time for Blair to understand where she might be going wrong at school – which worked well and allowed her character to grow throughout the novel, though there were times when Blair kept trying to prove she was right.

It also focused on intergenerational relationships, mother and daughter relationships, and family relationships as conflict arose between Blair and her mother about school, and as her nursing home friends at times encouraged her, yet when they had to, they faced responsibility and ensured Blair’s safety. It also focuses on the feelings that everyone can have at any stage of life about fitting in, and being who we are who we want to be and any fears we have about changes. Because it is told through Blair’s perspective, we see the world through her eyes, but some of the girls at school were a bit mean to her, telling her one thing and then something else and expecting her to understand – it was a good thing she had Poppy to explain some things to her throughout the novel.

Blair isn’t your typical child, because she has been raised around a lot of adults, which explains her difficulties interacting with children. But what if girls had even a tiny bit of Blair’s confidence at this stage in life in reality? Would they think and act differently? Ashleigh mentioned in an interview with Just Write for Kids that the way she felt about her confidence at eleven and the way she’d observed other girls at eleven lose their confidence was part of the inspiration for Blair, whose confidence meter seemed off the charts at times, but then, it did make her the person and character she is. And in showing how different generations can connect with each other, this novel shows the power of being young of heart and mind throughout our lives and that we can learn different things from people of all ages, whilst still being who we want to be, and who we are. This was a fun novel and I hope readers enjoy it.