Riley Reynolds Crushes Costume Day – MG Book Review

Synopsis: It’s book week at school, and nonbinary fourth grader Riley and their best friends craft hard for Dress Like Your Favorite Character Day. Colorful fabric! Paint! Glitter! They are ready to make the biggest and best group costume ever! But most of the other kids are having trouble coming up with costumes. Riley is ready to use their creativity and vision to help as many kids as possible so dress-up day will be a big success!

Release Date: 1st August 2022

Genres: Middle Grade, Lgbt+, Non-Binary, Identity, Creativity, Friendship,

Pages: 64

Thank you so much to Capstone/Stone Arch books and Netgalley for the ebook to read and review.

Review: I loved how much of an inclusive book this was, so wonderful to find a book like this it offers so much to young kids, giving them a great way to see inclusion. You got a really cool teacher glosssary at the start to teach all the facts, terms to help guide correctly.

Riley has all the great ideas for what costumes to wear, that every kid in school wanted their help on what they should do too. They were such a perfect helper for all their friends and never let anyone down in ensuring they all had the very best costumes they could for costume day at school. I really loved that even thoughRiley wanted to work on their own costume they still were kind enough to help all the other children.

Though I loved aspects of the story I wasn’t the biggest fan of it all, it just seemed a bit too long to me personally. A lot of the same kept happening through each chapter that could have been shortened a little bit. However it was really unique and interesting story with great inclusion and I like seeing all school costume day having the kids to all decide what they wanted to wear and all needing Riley’s help.

About Author/Illustrator: Jay Albee is the joint pen name for a LGBTQ+ couple named Jen Breach and J. Anthony. Between them they’ve done lots of jobs: archaeologist, illustrator, ticket taker, and bagel baker, but now they write and draw all day long in their rowhouse home in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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