My Seventh-Grade Life in Tights

“My Seventh-Grade Life in Tights” by Brooks Benjamin is a delightfully fun read filled with heart, sick dance moves, and lots of laughs.

Dillon is a seventh grade boy in a super cool freestyle dance squad with his best friends called the Dizzee Freekz. Dillon has big dreams of getting a Summer scholarship to Dance-Splosion, a real dance studio where he can up his game and work towards his dream of becoming a professional dancer someday. The problem? Dillon’s dad wants him to play football, which he has no interest in and the Dizzee Freakz think that dance studios are totally lame.

Dillon doesn’t want to disappoint his friends, so he agrees to join the dance studio with the intention of calling them out for what they really are – a bunch of sellouts who suck the creativity and fun out of dance. He convinces the snobbiest girl in class to help him brush up on his moves because he’s really not much of a dancer (unless ninja-freestyle counts as dancing, which, we totally think it does) and he not only realizes that dance studios might not be the enemy, but that he’s actually kind of enjoying it and learning more about dance than he ever knew before.

The book reads like a high-energy dance routine, and keeps you hooked chapter after chapter. While Dillon tries to figure out his place in the world, there’s lots of laugh-out-loud moments, 7th grade awkwardness, first crushes, and lots of totally relatable tidbits of what being in Middle School is really like. Dillon is vulnerable, full of heart, and the type of character you just can’t stop rooting for.

“My Seventh-Grade Life in Tights” is now available, so break out your best dance moves (or if you’re like us, your randomly weird and awkward movements that you try to pass off as dance), and head on over to your favorite bookstore.