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Review: Partly Cloudy, Tanita Davis

I discovered Tanita Davis memorably at an event where I was supposed to be doing things and paying attention, but because I had gotten so wrapped up in her middle grade novel Peas and Carrots, I just read and read and read it and ignored the events happening all around me. Which was/is kind of surprising! I don’t think of myself as a huge reader of middle grade books. Even at a time when middle grade is clearly undergoing an explosion of awesome content, it doesn’t tend to do much for me. I have, tragically, aged out of it. (I’m hoping this will change when my little niece and nephew get old enough for middle grade books. Right now Four is very into Amelia Bedelia, and the baby is very into gnawing on book corners.)

cover of Partly Cloudy: a Black girl in a white hoody with an orange backpack looks over her shoulder at the reader. The background is a blue sky with clouds that hover around the girl's head and shoulders.

Like Peas and Carrots, Partly Cloudy is about what makes a family and how to be a good citizen of the world. Madalyn has been accustomed to a very traditional family, where she and her mom and dad all live in the same place all the time. But now change is afoot. First her dad gets a job that takes him out of town most of the time, and then her mom decides to send her to live with her great-uncle so she can attend a better school. That leaves her without either parent for much of the week, and she has to make all new friends at a school where she’s the only Black kid in her class. She immediately vibes with one of her classmates, but quickly finds that Natalie harbors ugly ideas about Black boys and adults.

Partly Cloudy has a real slice-of-life vibe, in ways that I tend to find frustrating in books for older readers and adults, but really enjoyed here. Papa Lobo, Madalyn’s great-uncle, is a gem of a human being, and though Madalyn doesn’t quite get the hang of him at first, she’s quickly able to settle into life with him (even though he doesn’t have wifi). At the same time, she has two parents who are very involved in her life and to whom she’s very close, but Davis doesn’t shy away from the fact that financial problems are dictating a lot of the choices the family has to make. It was great to see representation of how many, many parents struggle to balance issues of finance with parenting, without any suggestion that they’ve fucked up fiscally or parentally. Madalyn doesn’t love her new situation, but she’s able to find the good in it, forming a close bond with Papa Lobo and making new friends at her school.

As a separate thing, I was delighted with the presence of Black Louisiana Catholics in this book! Papa Lobo goes to Mass every week — on Saturday, so he can hang out with his friends on Sunday — and throws out Creole phrases as well. Yay Louisiana!! And yay for representations of religious people not being close-minded jerks. (Contrary to what white evangelicals are constantly striving to make us believe, it is actually possible to be a person of faith without trying to take away rights from your fellow humans.)

The climactic event of the book is a fire that comes near enough to Madalyn’s life that her family’s affected by it. A of all, I feel so sorry for the kids today. What a crap life for them to live on this burning planet! Secondly, though, I was very heartwarmed to see the community pulling together to take care of each other in a time of disaster. Papa Lobo rightly insists that children deserve to be and feel safe, even if their parents raised them racist, while Madalyn insists on taking care of one of Papa Lobo’s nemeses — so they each have something to teach each other about the right way to act in times of crisis. Despite the miserable, ongoing counterexample of COVID-19, we do still do this for each other. We pull together in disasters. That’s a value worth cultivating, and Partly Cloudy knows it.

As for the racism, Madalyn’s immediate friend at school is a white girl named Natalie, and Madalyn quickly gets a sinking feeling that Natalie is kinda racist. She’s scared of Papa Lobo’s godson, Jean, and their mutual friends are quick to explain it away as the result of a bullying incident Natalie endured the previous year at the hands of a Black boy. But Madalyn’s not sure she should give Natalie a pass. When she finally talks to her mother, her mom wisely tells her that you get to choose when it’s worth it to you to try to educate, versus when you want to walk away. Because there’s such an onus placed on Black folks in real life to forgive and educate, I might have liked to see a little more pushback in the text to the idea that Madalyn should continue her relationship with Natalie. But in the end, the girls reconcile, and you can see that Natalie has been struck by the conversation Madalyn bravely had with her about the impact her words and ideas have had on Madalyn.

Partly Cloudy reminds us of the value of care, and of taking the time to really see those around us. Madalyn doesn’t love being apart from her parents, but she’s ultimately able to see the joy, fun, and value of making herself part of Papa Lobo’s life. Natalie has allowed the weeds of white supremacy to take root in her mind, but her friendship with Madalyn and the care that Madalyn’s family shows her during the fire help her to learn better and act better. Tanita Davis is relentlessly uncynical, and Partly Cloudy felt like a tonic in these wretched and angry times.