Governor General’s Award–winning author Deborah Ellis returns with a terrific middle-grade novel set in contemporary Toronto. Written in first-person narrative, the book follows 12-year-old Kate Grey after she is suspended from school for behavioural issues. Although she lives with her maternal grandmother, Gran, who owns and operates Junk Yard, the biggest junk business in their tri-county area, Kate cannot stop wondering about her mom, whose whereabouts and status are unknown. As Kate falls into memories of her life before living with Gran, readers come to understand the severity and bleakness of her past. Kate’s time living with her mom – who has substance-use issues – included being dragged through harrowing living circumstances, many of which included violent boyfriends. Gran sets strict expectations of behaviour and drills home the following work ethic: when you never have the means to outspend anyone and you refuse to “outmean” anyone, you must be able to outsmart them at every turn. 

While Kate is on a year-long wait-list for counselling, she and Gran find a book from the 1970s called Get Back to Groovy to help Kate peacefully navigate moments of intense rage which she regularly experiences. Kate also directs her ceaseless energy and entrepreneurial spirit to revitalizing a dilapidated shed on Gran’s property in the hopes of creating a money-making enterprise. After Gran vetoes a Lucy Van Pelt–style psychiatric help booth for fear of legal repercussions, Kate decides on a “Philosophic Help” booth, at the rate of two dollars per question. Armed with stacks of carefully vetted quotes and a revamped roulette wheel, and after on-the-ground promotion, Kate’s business opens. As a trickle of neighbours – not all kind-hearted, nor open to discovery – come to poke around Kate’s new venture, she finds not only a glimmer of success, but also surprising new allies as word of her booth spreads. In the midst of that small avenue of success, however, chasms of despair appear, including: the depressing return to school; new information regarding her long-deceased father and his family; major secrets Gran and her mother’s childhood friend have been holding close; and the all-too-sudden reappearance of her mother. 

Ellis’s storytelling is immersive, her writing precise and wise, with moments of cataclysmic heartbreak and fragments of hope mixing together to bring readers a potent emotional experience. Deftly written, with brilliantly layered and memorable heroines in Kate and Gran, The Outsmarters is a standout.