MMGM (5/1/2017): All the Answers by Kate Messner

For MMGM, I am recommending All the Answers by Kate Messner.

Here's the publisher's description:

What if your pencil had all the answers? Would you ace every test? Would you know what your teachers were thinking? When Ava Anderson finds a scratched up pencil, she doodles like she would with any other pencil. But when she writes a question in the margin of her math quiz, she hears a clear answer in a voice no one else seems to hear. 

With the help of her friend Sophie, Ava figures out that the pencil will answer factual questions only--those with definite right or wrong answers--but won't predict the future. Ava and Sophie discover all kinds of uses for the pencil, and Ava's confidence grows with each answer. But it's getting shorter with every sharpening, and when the pencil reveals a scary truth about Ava's family, she realizes that sometimes the bravest people are the ones who live without all the answers . . .

This book has become one of my all-time favorites. I love the premise, the characters, and the fun (and horrible) revelations, but most of all, I love this book's depiction of anxiety. As someone who has anxiety, I can relate to how the main character, Ava, often worries, whether about her family or her safety on a particularly nerve-wracking school field trip. Ava's worries and how she is sometimes trapped in them, nearing full-blown panic, or overcoming them, finally convincing herself to do things, is so realistic that it seems just like a vivid memory. I love how Ava's relationship with the pencil is both good, allowing Ava to help others, such as at her grandfather's nursing home, and bad, allowing Ava to answer her worries, some of which are true, making her worry more in anticipation and dread. Finally, I love how this book manages many complex topics, as well as many smaller ones, to create an incredibly realistic depiction of life and of a person with anxiety. (Even despite the magic pencil!) This book is amazingly written and so enjoyable to read, whether through the true-to-life sad parts or the truly uplifting happy ones.