Middle grade readers will likely relate to Jen Wilde’s recent novel, Paige Not Found. Wilde’s book features eleven-year-old neuroatypical Paige Wells whose insecurities provide obstacles but whose courage is commendable.
Paige dreams of being just like her favorite teacher Ms. Penny: “Happy, funny, wearing kooky glasses, and doing a job she loves” (38). When Paige discovers that she has a mechanical device in her brain to monitor her moods and serotonin levels, she is angry. Feeling like a lab rat because her parents signed on to a research trial with Nucleus, owned by tech giant, Elliot Preston, who is about to sell the failing company to Homepage, Paige is determined to stop the corporate organization from collecting data without her consent and potentially selling it to the highest bidder.
With her best friend Mara Greenberg, Paige sets out to find the other children in the research pool so that they can stop the merger and its mind-control efforts. Taking tips from her favorite online game, Realm of Wonders, and inspiration from Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, Paige assembles the tools she needs for her take-down: “She has a team of kids just like her, who know how much is at stake and don’t care that this fight isn’t ‘fun’; they just know that it must be won. She doesn’t have a velvet pouch filled with magic spells strung to her belt, but she does have her fanny pack packed with stim toys and snacks and pepper spray” (129).
Although some people might see Nucleus’ work as cutting edge—collecting data from the brains of autistic children so that it can be studied by expert neuroscientists in a program that hopefully will lead to giant strides in the scientific community for neurodiverse people—Paige wants to control her own mind and protect her identity. She’s not willing to sell her brain for a chance to be “normal,” to make her parents and her teachers happy. For her, the risk of sacrificing her personal information is not worth the reward.
On her journey to speak truth to power, Paige navigates the perils typical to her age group: bullies, jealousy, friendship, parental constraints, and the desire to be seen and accepted for who she is: A queer, nonbinary, almost teenager who is “quiet, messy, doesn’t brush her hair or get good grades or make funny jokes” (83) and has an obsession with dinosaurs. Paige “laments how her mind is full of complicated questions about her gender and sexuality, and how she has to add ‘fight toxic billionaire who wants to sell and erase us’ to her list of mental puzzles” (53).
- Donna