A young teen stuck inside his home because of the pandemic forges a new bond with his great-grandmother. As he encourages his great-grandmother to talk about the past, he learns the valuable lesson that resilience takes on many forms. Author Katherine Marsh brings to her target audience the immediacy of not one but two current world events while emphasizing the universal themes in her newest novel The Lost Year. Life in Leonia, New Jersey, has come to a standstill for 13-year-old Matthew and his little family. It’s 2020, and everyone is stuck inside because of the pandemic. Matt never thought he’d miss going to school, but he does. He wants everything to go back to normal, even if that means dealing with dumb stuff like homework. He loves that he gets to play Zelda on his Nintendo Switch for hours on end, but, really, it just reminds him of how messed up everything is. Like how his dad is in Paris and his mom is in New Jersey. Divorce sucks big time for kids, and it’s even worse when he can’t talk to his dad as often as he likes. A journalist for a big-time media outlet, Matt’s dad is busy covering the front lines and reporting all the most important stories of the moment. So Matt misses his dad and he worries about him getting Covid. And his mom is super stressed all the time. She spends most of her time in between Zoom work calls yelling at Matt to get off his Switch or to do his chores or go outside for fresh air. His mom is also worried about GG, short for “Great-Grandmother.” When things started going sideways with the pandemic, Matt’s mom moved GG in with them. For the last month, his mom has helped GG with all the little tasks of the day. Then Matt does something dumb that makes his mom flip her lid and take away his Switch, so GG becomes his responsibility. Specifically, his mom says, Matt and GG need to work on the moving boxes GG brought with her from her assisted living facility and clean them out. At first, Matt’s not sure how to talk to GG. Like, what could they possibly have in common? She’s literally a hundred years old, and she’s adamant about Matt not emptying her boxes. The more time Matt spends with her, the more he realizes that GG’s stubbornness isn’t just an old person being old. There’s a deep sorrow behind it. With some advice from his dad and his own curiosity driving him, Matt starts to talk to GG and get her to open up. The result is a history lesson and a personal one that Matt won’t soon forget. Author Katherine Marsh takes on the monumental task of balancing two immensely important world events and does it with precision. The passages with Matt suffering through the early weeks of the Covid-19 lockdown will make readers empathize with him in an instant but also make his emotions and experiences feel new. There’s no doubt that the book, in regards to the pandemic, will become timeless and an important testament to this difficult era for school-age readers. Equally challenging is the way Marsh tackles the second world event: the manmade famine known as the Holodomor that Stalin imposed on Ukraine when it was still a Soviet state in the early 1930s. GG tells the story of a trio of young girls living through the Holodomor; as one of the three girls in the trio, GG’s tale sounds heartbreakingly familiar, especially considering current events. Marsh’s careful research details for readers, in an accessible way, the perils of disinformation and how hearts are able to change, albeit at a high cost. Parts of the novel might feel inevitable, but Marsh keeps several surprises for readers to experience throughout the book. That inevitability only reinforces the strength of the plot. This book should be considered required reading in social studies classes across the country; Marsh has given her readers a great gift in teaching them new things about these events.