Middle Grade Sidekick Short Review: Outside (2025) by Jennifer Holm

cover image of Outside by Jennifer Holm, published by Scholastic Press, 2025.

The Basics

Page Length: 240

Audiobook Length: ~4.5 hours

Grade Reading Level: 4+

Target Audience Age: 9-13

Goodreads Score: 3.47 out of 5

Buy it HERE

Discussion Guide from Scholastic HERE

Setting: Near future, post-apocalypse, somewhere in North America

Genre: Middle Grade Dystopian Fiction

Topics: Isolation, Apocalypse, Survival, Pets, Family Dynamics, Safety, Control

Plot: Twelve-year-old Razzi has always dreamed of the outside—but she’s never actually seen it. All she knows is what lies just beyond the walls of the compound where she, her family, and a few other families live. They took refuge here after a World War and a deadly disease devastated the Earth, choosing to stay inside to remain safe from “the poisoned.”

Although Razzi is curious about the outside, she is the oldest child in the Refuge, which means she has a responsibility to set an example for the others—especially after one child, Ollie, recently died while stepping onto the roof to see beyond the compound.

Razzi faces another scare when she experiences a major health incident with her heart. After receiving a heart transplant—from a dog—her curiosity to explore beyond the walls grows even stronger. It feels as if her strange new connection to this dog is trying to tell her something: to leave the Refuge and discover what really lies Outside. Will she follow this instinct and bravely defy the rules? What will she find if she does? Will she meet the same fate as Ollie—or will leaving finally allow her to see the world she feels called to explore?

You might like this book if you like:

• Animals

• The outdoors--hiking, camping, going to the beach, and taking in the beauty of nature

• Books/movies like: City of Ember and The Wild Robot

• Books like: Hunters of the Lost City, Swipe, The Barren Grounds, The Secrets of Haven Point, Alabama Moon, The Last Cuentista

• Shows like: The Last Kids on Earth, Flight 29 Down, The Famous Five, Silverpoint, The Sparticle Mystery, Survive This

• Movies like: The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Wall-E

  
  

Other books written by this author: Sunny Side Up (Sunny series), The Fourteenth Goldfish, Turtle in Paradise, Queen of the World (Babymouse series), Penny from Heaven, Our Only May Amelia

Content

• Language: none

• Sex/Romance: none

• Violence/Scariness: one of the children in the Refuge dies and all the characters are in mourning, the protagonist undergoes a scary heart surgery, disease has ravaged the world and the characters are hiding in the Refuge from "the poisoned," a girl is chased by an alligator, there are moments of parents and children in the court system, parents facing charges of neglect.

• Drinking/Smoking/Drugs: none

  
  

Book Talk Read Aloud Section

*What is a book talk? (Watch a how to video here. Read my blog post here)

If you have the physical book, read pages 1-2 (through the paragraph break "I couldn't go Outside, but the Outside had managed to get in.")

If you don't, read the same pages (location 55-61) in the Kindle reading sample here.