Jen Dixon, everyone’s favorite Kansas City class mom, is back for her last year of middle school. Well, not her last year, but her son’s last year, making this her final year as class mom. She is looking forward to hanging up her emails and retiring, but first (as always) the PTA president has just one more thing for her to take on.
So in addition to raising her fifth grade son Max and two young adult women, in addition to running a household and being a wife to a man who owns sporting goods stores and yoga studios, in addition to being the daughter to aging parents and helping out with her 2-year-old granddaughter, she’s also learning to teach spin classes. And she’s Max’s class mom. And now, apparently, she’s in charge of raising $10,000 to buy new tablets for the middle schoolers, an amount far higher than any group had been asked to raise in the past.
But nobody juggles like Jen. Between her spin classes and yoga classes, her parents and her kids, her friends and her husband’s ex-wife, Jen finds a way to balance challenges with humor and heart, and faces what she can with all the grace she can muster. A lackluster first few spin classes as a teacher? She turns to her friends for advice. She needs snacks for class activities and chaperones for an overnight field trip? Turn to those snarky emails that she’s been using for years to wear her fellow caretakers down. Her fellow fundraisers are struggling to think of good ideas to raise the $10,000? Just nod and smile when one of them suggests getting Tom Hanks to help out and wait until inspiration strikes.
But some of her problems are more difficult. When Viv’s ex’s mother wants to take their toddler daughter to India for several months? Hire a good lawyer for the arbitration. When her father becomes lethargic and her mother starts talking about people living in the basement? Find a place for them to consider moving to while getting a home inspector to check the basement. When your best friend’s mother-in-law’s spirit guides tell you that the key to the fundraising is pizza? Ummm, well, that’s something that will take some time to figure out. But it’s Jen, our favorite class mom. You know she’s got this.
Yoga Pant Nation is the third book in Laurie Gelman’s series about Jen Dixon. We met her in Class Mom. We got to know her better in You’ve Been Volunteered. And we get another needed dose here. With lots of intelligent humor and realistic family situations, the Dixons face important issues like bullying, sex education, relationships with exes, dating apps, aging parents, and the song stylings of Rick Astley.
I have been a big fan of Laurie Gelman’s since I first met Jen Dixon years ago. I love her big heart and her acerbic humor, her intelligence and her generosity. She seems genuinely real and very Midwestern, and I wish I could know her in real life. But since I can’t, all I can do it hope for another Jen Dixon novel in my future, because I definitely want more.
Egalleys for Yoga Pant Nation were provided by Henry Holt & Company through NetGalley, with many thanks.
