AfterMath

MASL Book Trailer Winner

AfterMath Book Trailer - Kinley M. and Lena R. from South Valley Middle School

About the Author

Emily Barth Isler is a writer, Middle Grade Fiction Author, and sustainability/beauty journalist. A former child actress, she performed all over the world in theatre, film, and TV. She spent several years in New York writing episodic television for the web with Emmy-award winning PhoebeTV, and a lifetime writing YA short stories and plays. 

She holds a B.A. in Film Studies from Wesleyan University, where she took all the creative writing classes she could find, including one which was taught by none other than Lemony Snicket himself! Her debut novel, AfterMath, came out in September 2021, and her work as a Beauty Editor/Writer can be seen online in many publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.


About the Book


One thing I like about math is how you have to show your work. It’s one thing to say that x + y = z, but another to prove how you got there. That’s how it is with friendship too.

Twelve-year-old Lucy is not prepared to be the new kid at school. She’s still grieving her little brother, Theo, who recently died from a congenital heart defect. Her parents are so intent on a “fresh start” that she doesn’t know how to talk to them anymore. And the other kids in her grade are survivors of a very different kind of tragedy: a school shooting that devastated their small town four years ago.

Without the shared past that both unites and divides her classmates, Lucy feels lost. Even her love of math doesn’t offer the absolute answers she craves. But when an after-school mime class gives her a chance to forge new kinds of connections, Lucy finds that while grief can take many shapes and sadness may feel infinite, love is just as powerful.

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