This is a situation where I am not the intended audience, it was marketed as middle grade but the writing and the story were clearly intentionally geared toward younger children. Rhodes wrote in blunt short sentences in first person present. Which has the closest connection between reader and protagonist which when she's ten and I am in my mid twenties does the opposite of immersion.

Throughout I thought the story touched on important issues of poverty, homelessness, loneliness, trauma and the effects of 911. It looks at finding out about it for the first time and history being alive.

I loved Ghost Boys which was a later book by Rhodes so I trust her as a writer that even though it wasn't a style I could gel with she channeled ten year old Deja in a way that would be helpful informative and true to the children she wrote for.