2025 Newbery Contenders: The year of Bad Moms
At first I thought it was just me, being a young mom and taking a lot of these books personally… but NO! When looking at the list of 2025 Newbery contenders (and mainly the middle grade fiction) we are INUNDATED by titles with bad parents, particularly bad moms this year.
I always wonder where these trends come from… and I do like the realistic portrayal that parents are not super heroes and just ordinary people fighting their own battles… but this was still a lot!
We have:
disappearing moms (THE TENTH MISTAKE OF HANK HOOPERMAN, AND THEN, BOOM, DEEP WATER, NOT THE WORST FRIEND IN THE WORLD)
moms that deliver a lot of pressure (THE COLOR OF SOUND, THE SECRET LIBRARY, THE WORLD DIVIDED BY PIPER)
moms suffering addiction or mental illness (KYRA, JUST FOR TODAY, WINNIE NASH IS NOT YOUR SUNSHINE)
moms fleeing cults (THE WRONG WAY HOME)
When looking at all these themes and titles laid out there. I think the mom that sticks out to me as the strongest character is Kyra’s mom. We can really see how the events unfold, and little glimpses into the moms brain even if it is from Kyra’s perspective.
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The mom I have the biggest issue with is Hank’s mom and just how selfish her personality is and what tough situations she puts Hank in. I hate to say that there’s probably many kids that relate to that title…
I’m also really impressed by the character development of Rosie’s mom in THE COLOR OF SOUND. It’s really cool to see her as a young girl and as an adult. However, I felt like I was missing where the “big change” happened with her. How did she go from wanting four kids to only wanting one? How did her personality change? Those questions feel very unanswered to me.
What do you think about these titles and the moms character development? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.



Filed under: Book Discussion
About Emily Mroczek-Bayci
Emily Mroczek (Bayci) is a freelance children’s librarian in the Chicago suburbs. She served on the 2019 Newbery committee. You can reach her at emilyrmroczek@gmail.com.
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It has been alarming how these books just keep coming! But I like Emily’s point that many of them offer “…the realistic portrayal that parents are not super heroes and just ordinary people fighting their own battles.” It’s very different from the long-established tradition of just getting rid of the parents early on so the kids can have adventures (see: the rhinoceros-eaten parents in “James and the Giant Peach”). In most of these books, while the moms are in crisis, the heart of the stories is how the kids respond.
SHARK TEETH by Sherri Winston can go on the list too (under the “moms suffering addiction” subheading). At the end of the first chapter, Kita sets up the question that runs throughout the book…and through some of these other titles: “But sometimes…sometimes, no lie, I had to wonder if things were better without Mama.” (4)
One of things that HANK HOOPERMAN and SHARK TEETH in particular capture so well is the way these kids are having to deal with overwhelming family-related challenges…and at the same time find small ways where they can just be kids: Hank with basketball and his new friends, Kita with the dance squad…especially the moment where she ignores her mom trying to contact her and disaster follows.
It’s almost heartbreaking to see some of these child characters trying so hard to carve out a bit of breathing room. Especially when they also feel the weight of responsibility for a sibling and for the struggling parent as well.
I also have to say that most of these books are really compelling. It’s hard not to have instant sympathy for the kids and to be rooting for them all the way. With HANK HOOPERMAN, I think the reader feels so connected to Hank that we can fully understand why he makes that big mistake of driving off with his mom. We can see that it’s not going to work out (and I’m including child readers in that “we”), but we know him so well that we empathize. He wants so much for her to be okay, and for his life (and his sister’s) to get back to some sort of normal, that he can almost convince himself. Putting “mistake” prominently in the title is a neat touch, because most of the time we see Hank using his best judgement and doing all he can. But it makes sense because he himself is so quick to blame himself (which rings true for a child of an alcoholic).
I think in AND THEN, BOOM is where I was really compelled and rooting thru the main character. Like I found myself wanting him to not get caught the whole book.
Julie Ann Corsaro elsewhere mentioned QUAGMIRE TIARELLO COULDN’T BE BETTER as a direct comparison to HANK HOOPERMAN. The mom here falls under both “mental illness” and “disappearing.” My previous comment about oft-used tropes and genres does apply here, but nevertheless the way Larsen uses and combines them has vaulted this book to top 2 for me. For example, there is a foaling scene – I feel like there must be multiple comparable examples of such in the literature, though MacLachlan’s Arthur, For The Very First Time, is the only one coming to mind at the moment. Larsen uses this scene to slip in notes that are heartbreaking in the shadow of Quag’s mom issues:
“He looks down at Claire [the horse giving birth for the first time], and all he can think to do is press both hands gently against her sweat-flecked neck and rock back and forth with her as she shakes. Quag tells her everything his uncle told him to and more. He tells her it will be okay, it will be okay, you’ll be okay. He tells her not to worry. He tells her he’ll stay with her. He tells her he’s scared too. That she is brave. That she will be a good mom. That she is strong. He’s seen it. And, finally, he sings to her, low and quiet–a song his mom used to sing about hush-a-bye and all the pretty little horses.” (165)
Or birds. It is hard to believe this book wasn’t consciously inspired by Schmidt’s Okay For Now. (Even in the title, “Couldn’t Be Better” is a side-eyed way of saying “Okay For Now”.) There are notes about different kinds of birds interspersed throughout. The one about cowbirds is a chilling metaphor:
“The chick gets bigger and bigger and bigger, until maybe the bird that’s trying to take care of it is only half its size. So now that bird that keeps bringing the food has this huge, hungry, too big thing that has taken over its whole life. Does that bird know what’s happening? Or does it just think this is how life is, this huge open mouth stretching eternally up to meet it?” (195)
I hope we get to dive into this book. I’m glad it’s getting starred reviews and prominent ads on the SLJ website. I’m rooting for it.
I don’t know why QUAGMIRE TIARELLO COULDN’T BE BETTER was not on my radar yet. I just put it on hold!
There is also the mom in Olivetti! She is not exactly a bad mom, but she does abandon her family—not a great look though somewhat understandable given her situation (no spoiler).
I agree with Emily about the stage mother in The Color of Sound; we don’t get to see or understand what happened to change her into a rigid person who has been alienated from her own parents. I thought she seemed like a pretty normal adolescent as far as her attitude towards her parents went. It’s a thought-provoking book, but I think it tried to do too much, what with synesthesia, musical prodigiousness, the Holocaust, and peer problems, which may have resulted in the mother’s partially supernatural storyline/character-arc being under-developed.
There’s an interesting, complicated (non-abusive) mother is in the recently published, Answers to Dogs, which I feel is worth a look. (Trigger warning: there is animal abuse). Centered around school, family, and a nasty dog kennel, the parents of the 12-year-old protagonist who establishes a relationship with a neglected, runaway border collie are more complicated than we often see in middle-grade fiction, particularly the mother. There are revelatory tidbits about her throughout the book, often revealed though dialogue, which are also thought-provoking. Is she depressed? Is she grieving? Could a dog bring her back to life? I thought Answers to Dogs was also a particularly well-structured novel.
How about the mom in Louder than Hunger? I read it a while ago… but I think she might fit in the Moms that Deliver Pressure category? And that dad…
The fact that I gave 10 examples and more keep coming is absurd for me.. if we opened it up to bad dads too, this would just go off the rails!
The comment I am getting from students is that they don’t want all these sad books with parents who either die or have mental illness. So where is publishing going with this theme. Many of my students are just now wanting to read Fantasy because they don’t want all the sad that they are getting from these books. This has been a huge theme with my students this year.
IDK what’s up this year- Dad’s aren’t even in the picture and mom’s are on strike.
So many great books this year delivered gut-wrenching stories about the messy reality of family and kids struggled as mom’s went missing and hunger, parentification and foster care became realities for kids. The mom’s get it together and their perspectives weigh heavily in Kyra Just For Today and Olivetti. And then, Boom! and Deep Water feature failing moms. Shark Teeth, The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, Jupiter Rising and The Witching Wind communicate the tension and next steps of foster care and accelerated responsibility. Individually the list is full of excellent stories. The combined stack was heavy reading for middle-grade.
Choosing one for the blog- I’ll weigh in on the current HM Mock Newbery leader. Gennifer Choldenko’s The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman is a powerful and heartfelt coming-of-age story that tackles deep questions of identity, morality, and the universal message of hope. It succeeds in addressing the difficult topic of parentification in a way appropriate for middle-grade readers. Hank will be a strong contender for 2025 Newbery Consideration.
The author’s tone is clever, leaving the reader to resign from the judgment of failed decisions because the word use and setting are a constant reminder that this kid was surviving and trying. The feeling of loneliness is conveyed through mindset language as Hank’s mindset shifts to a focus on what could go wrong instead of what could go right. For example, on page 114, Hank states, “Nothing good ever happens to me.” (Choldenko 114)
Gennifer Choldenko has succeeded in providing a open-ended narrative that helps the reader reflect on the diversity of experiences children have, while drawing attention to the transition towards responsible decision making all young people move towards. It’s messy.
Judging alongside the Newbery criteria, this book is powerful in delineating characters and appropriateness of style for the upper end of the Newbery range. The author cleverly writes the challenges of loving someone even when they act unlikeable, the complicated truth about trust, and the magic of second chances. If you think your middle-school chores and responsibilities are a drag, just wait until you dive into a day in the life of Hank Hooperman. Hank is a reminder that we need each other as we endeavor to try.