Reviewed by Ona Gritz
An image that always comes to me when I think of seventh grade is my mother’s back as I deliberately fell farther and farther behind her on a walk into town. My hope, of course, was that we’d be perceived as strangers, this terribly embarrassing woman and I. This is where we meet Roxie Glass, the heroine of Stacy Cervenka and Diane Debrovner’s stellar debut novel–in seventh grade, willing herself to be seen as anyone other than her parents’ daughter. Roxie has a chance at this. She’s new in town. New in school. If she can keep her classmates from meeting her parents, at least for a while, then maybe she’ll finally get to make, and keep, a group of friends.
The thing is, Roxie’s parents are actually great. They’re flexible, engaged, and welcoming. Dr. and Mr. Glass are also blind, and in Roxie’s old school and community, they were not only underestimated but shunned. After a few mishaps and misunderstandings, Roxie was left out of parties and playdates. As “that girl with blind parents” she didn’t have a single friend. Roxie’s loneliness is palpable, and this, along with her passion and creativity, makes her easy to root for. At the same time, her determination to change her situation, no matter the cost, will keep young readers turning pages long past lights out.
The novel is written in third person, a fact I kept forgetting as I read because I felt fully enmeshed in Roxie’s heart and mind. The exception is seven interspersed first-person chapters in the voice of Dr. Glass’s guide dog, Nash. It’s a daring stylistic choice, one that in the hands of lesser writers could have easily gone awry. But instead of the cutesy dog’s-eye view I braced myself for, we’re given what feels like a genuine peek into the emotional and intellectual life of a working guide. We get to experience Nash’s sensitivity and intuitiveness, his attachments and temptations, and the pride he takes in his work, along with his mixed feelings as his retirement nears. As it happens, I’ve lived with two of my husband’s guide dogs and was present for those tender days of transition from working dog to full-time pet, or as Nash so eloquently describes it, from being two dogs to just one.
I look up at Penny [Dr. Glass] and now I know why I’ve been tired. Why I feel different.
I’ve been an excellent guide dog, but it’s time for me to be only one dog. A home dog.
Penny strokes my head. “Nash?”
She will understand. She’s my person.
It’s with this same light touch and eloquence that Cervenka and Debrovner invite readers in to discover the tools, technology, and call to ingenuity that are all part of a blind person’s day. These details are woven into the narrative naturally, never interrupting the story’s flow. Readers, disabled and non-disabled alike, will certainly learn from this novel, but its authors never sacrifice storytelling for a teachable moment. As in all good literature for children or adults, we are guests in this world and we learn by observing, not by being told what there is to see.
Mom pulls her black oven mitts out of the drawer next to the stove and puts the pan in the oven.
“Alexa, set a timer for thirty minutes.”
Mom and Dad have so much tech that makes life easier—not just Alexa and Google Maps, but a computer program that reads their emails aloud, a braille printer, and an app that tells them if they’re holding a one-dollar bill or a twenty.
Sighted adults always tell Roxie’s parents they’re amazing, but they hate that. They think it’s insulting to be called “amazing” for doing ordinary things like getting dressed or taking the train or cooking dinner.
“Being blind isn’t the same experience as a sighted person putting on a blindfold,” Dad often explains, trying not to get annoyed.
Another area where this novel shines is in its complex, imperfect characters. Roxie is a delight, but like any flesh-and-blood or well-drawn seventh grader, she can also be exasperating. With nothing to go on but the attitudes of her peers at her last school, Roxie is convinced her parents’ blindness puts her new friendships in constant jeopardy. Driven by this misconception, she makes poor and even dangerous decisions. The result is twofold. We experience Roxie as fully realized and human, and the book is a page-turner because the stakes are so often high.
Another far-from-perfect tween is Quinn, the girl with the most sway in Roxie’s new friend group and the hardest to win over. But rather than ditch “the girl with blind parents” as Roxie fears, Quinn sees an opportunity when she first meets Dr. and Mr. Glass. If the only adults watching them are both blind, the girls can, in her words, do whatever they want. Still, Quinn isn’t a villain. She, like Roxie, learns and evolves.
The neighbors who treated the Glass family so badly in the town they moved from aren’t broad-brushed as villains either. The only villains in the story are ignorance and ableism, making Roxie in Color an accurate lens through which to view the world we and young readers inhabit. Those young readers are sure to find this winning new novel a joy to read.
Note: The novel is typeset in Atkinson Hyperlegible, a font developed by the Braille Institute specifically for low-vision readers
Title: Roxie in Color
Authors: Diane Debrovner and Stacy Cervenka
Publisher: Candlewick
Year: 2026
Read Stacy Cervenka’s review of Ona’s book, If You Find This Letter, in this issue of Wordgathering.
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About the Reviewer
Ona Gritz’s new memoir, Everywhere I Look, won the Readers’ Choice Gold Award for Best Adult Book, the Independent Author Award in New Nonfiction, the Independent Author Award in True Crime, and is an Independent Book Review 2024 Must-Read. Her nonfiction has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The Guardian, Brevity, Parents, and River Teeth. Among her recent honors are two Notable mentions in The Best American Essays and a Best Life Story in Salon. The Space You Left Behind, Ona’s first young adult novel, written in verse, has just been released from West 44 Books and is featured in The Children’s Book Council’s Hot Off the Press roundup of anticipated best sellers.