Awkward by Svetlana Chmakova Summary, Characters and Themes
Awkward by Svetlana Chmakova is a middle-grade graphic novel about embarrassment, friendship, rivalry, and the hard work of doing the right thing after making a mistake. The story follows Peppi, a new student at Berrybrook Middle School, whose first-day panic leads her to hurt Jaime, a kind boy who only tried to help her.
From there, the book grows into a school story about art, science, club politics, pressure, apology, and cooperation. It is light in tone but serious about shame, courage, and the way young people learn to repair harm.
Summary
Peppi begins her time at Berrybrook Middle School with the kind of disaster that feels enormous to a new student. On her first day, she trips in front of other students and drops her belongings everywhere.
A boy tries to help her gather her things, but the other students immediately mock both of them. They call him a “nerder” and tease Peppi by linking her to him.
Peppi, overwhelmed by embarrassment and desperate to escape the attention, shoves the boy away and runs. The moment passes quickly for everyone else, but it stays with her.
She knows she did something cruel to someone who was trying to be kind, yet every time she thinks about apologizing, fear stops her.
Peppi joins the art club, where she feels more at home. The club is led by Mr. Ramirez, and one of its strongest members is Maribella, a confident student who seems able to speak up, organize people, and take charge.
Peppi admires Maribella’s boldness because she feels she lacks that same courage. The art club soon learns that it has not been given a table at the school’s annual club fair.
The science club, which already has a tense relationship with the art club, does have a table. The principal’s reason is that the art club has not shown how it contributes to the school community.
During this period, Peppi also struggles in science class. She copies homework from a friend because she is afraid of failing, and she accidentally turns in one of her drawings instead of the work she was supposed to submit.
Miss Tobins, her science teacher, sees potential in the drawing and asks her to turn it into a labeled scientific diagram for extra credit. She also decides Peppi needs tutoring.
To Peppi’s alarm, the tutor assigned to her is the same boy she pushed on her first day. His name is Jaime.
Peppi’s first tutoring session with Jaime is uncomfortable. She wants to apologize but cannot make herself say the words.
Jaime simply focuses on helping her with the science work. His quiet patience makes her guilt sharper.
At the same time, the art club looks for a way to prove its value to the school. Peppi shyly suggests that the club could draw for the school newspaper, and Maribella repeats the idea with force.
The group becomes excited about creating comics based on school life, and Peppi is made co-editor of the project.
The rivalry between art and science grows more visible. Members of the science club interrupt the art club with a drone carrying a water balloon, and the two groups keep treating each other like enemies.
Still, Peppi begins to see Jaime outside the role her club has assigned to him. She notices him cleaning insults from his locker with a homemade robot, and later she spends time with him during a school trip to the Discovery Center.
On that trip, students take part in a geocaching activity involving science puzzles. Peppi and Jaime end up working together, solving clues, finding the geocache, and enjoying each other’s company.
Peppi realizes that Jaime is not just the boy she hurt; he is thoughtful, clever, and fun to be around.
The problem is that school loyalties make friendship difficult. Peppi belongs to the art club, Jaime to the science club.
Each side mocks and judges the other. Peppi wants to use her experience with Jaime as material for a comic, but when Jaime sees the draft, he leaves without saying much.
Later, Miss Tobins suspends Peppi’s tutoring after her grades improve, which disappoints Peppi because it removes one of her only chances to speak with Jaime.
The club conflict becomes official when the principal announces that both clubs must complete a project that benefits the school. The students will vote on the better project, and the winning club will receive the table at the fair.
Maribella becomes fiercely determined to win, partly because she carries private pressure from home. When Peppi visits Maribella’s house, she sees that Maribella is afraid of disappointing her father.
He is harsh, controlling, and insulting toward Maribella’s mother, which reveals why Maribella feels such a strong need to appear successful and dependable.
On her way home from Maribella’s house, Peppi nearly gets hit by a speeding car and falls from her bike. Jaime and his mother find her and help her.
Peppi spends time at Jaime’s house while waiting for her mother. There, she meets Jaime’s mother, an artist who uses a wheelchair, and Jaime’s father, an inventor with a workshop full of machines.
Peppi sees Jaime in a warmer setting and learns more about his interests, his family, and his kindness. Jaime’s mother gently asks Peppi whether she is the girl who pushed him, and Peppi admits that she is sorry.
Jaime’s mother tells her that Jaime is the one who needs to hear it. Inspired, Peppi creates a drawn apology.
Peppi eventually gives Jaime the apology, but bullies steal it and read it aloud. This time, instead of shrinking away, Peppi stands up for herself and for Jaime.
She yells at them because the apology was private and not theirs to take. The moment helps her and Jaime become closer.
They walk home together, laugh about what happened, and bond over comics. Peppi finally feels the relief of having apologized and the happiness of having made a real friend.
Meanwhile, the art club’s comic project succeeds with the newspaper, but the science club prepares a strong project of its own: a solar plane that can tow the school banner at sports games. Maribella panics when she realizes the science club may win.
She steals the plane’s remote control and asks Peppi to help hide it. Peppi, torn between loyalty and conscience, agrees at first.
The next day, the science club is frantic, the launch is delayed, and accusations spread. Someone hacks the school paper website and claims the art club sabotaged the science project.
The art club wants revenge, and the conflict becomes worse.
Peppi goes to Maribella’s house and learns from a neighbor that Maribella and her mother left after a terrible fight. Peppi then decides she cannot keep the remote.
She secretly returns it to Jaime’s house, but Jaime sees her. He is hurt because he thinks she stole it after knowing how hard his club worked.
Peppi cannot reveal Maribella’s secret, but she explains that the person who took it made a mistake and is still a good person. Jaime accepts the remote but is disappointed.
The science club launches its plane, but the principal decides that both clubs have behaved badly. Neither club gets a table, and all club activities are suspended until the hostility between them can be addressed.
The two groups argue in the hallway, blaming each other for everything. Peppi finally loses patience and yells at them to stop.
Their fighting, she points out, has cost them all what they wanted.
Maribella later comes to Peppi’s house with her mother. She is leaving to stay with her grandmother two states away and does not know when she will return.
She asks Peppi if they can write to each other. Her departure makes Peppi understand how much pain Maribella was carrying and how fear can push people into bad choices.
Afterward, Miss Tobins tells Peppi that she is doing well in both art and science and mentions Leonardo da Vinci as someone who belonged to both worlds. Peppi begins to see a solution.
Instead of treating art and science as opposites, the clubs could work together. She creates a plan for a do-it-yourself indoor planetarium and asks Jaime to help present it.
The two persuade both clubs to join forces, despite resistance from students who still think artists and scientists cannot cooperate.
The joint project changes the atmosphere. Mr. Ramirez and Miss Tobins support the plan, the principal allows the clubs to meet again, and the students work hard to build the planetarium.
In the end, both clubs receive tables at the fair, placed side by side. When the same mean kids later tease Peppi and Jaime again, the art and science students defend them together.
The book closes with the two groups sharing the same cafeteria table, showing that the real victory is not winning a competition but learning how to respect one another.
Characters
Peppi
Peppi is the central character of Awkward, and her growth begins with a mistake she badly wants to undo. She is creative, shy, anxious, and deeply sensitive to how others see her.
Her first-day reaction to Jaime is not driven by malice but by panic, which makes her guilt feel even heavier. Much of her character arc is about learning that being a good person is not the same as never doing harm; it means admitting the harm, apologizing, and trying to act better afterward.
Peppi’s artistic imagination shapes the way she thinks, especially when she processes events through drawings and comics. She is also more observant than she initially appears.
She notices Maribella’s stress, Jaime’s isolation, the cruelty of the bullies, and the wastefulness of the club rivalry. By the end of the book, Peppi becomes someone who can speak publicly, challenge her peers, and create a solution that brings divided groups together.
Her courage develops slowly, which makes it believable. She does not stop being nervous, but she learns to act despite nervousness.
Jaime
Jaime is kind, intelligent, and socially isolated in ways that make Peppi’s treatment of him especially painful. He is introduced through other students’ mockery, but the book gradually shows him as much more than the label his classmates use.
Jaime likes science because he enjoys understanding how things work, not because he wants to dominate competitions. This separates him from some science club members who are more interested in beating the art club.
He is patient as Peppi’s tutor, inventive enough to make practical machines, and open enough to share geocaching, comics, and family life with her. His hurt after the remote incident is important because it shows he is not endlessly forgiving in a simple way.
He can be wounded, disappointed, and angry, yet he also thinks carefully about people’s intentions. Jaime’s friendship with Peppi becomes one of the book’s strongest examples of repair.
He helps her see science differently, and she helps him become part of a wider community.
Maribella
Maribella is confident on the surface but frightened underneath. In the art club, she is a leader, organizer, and source of energy.
She speaks loudly, pushes ideas forward, and gives the club a sense of direction. Peppi admires her because Maribella seems to have the confidence Peppi lacks.
Yet Maribella’s home life reveals why her drive is so intense. Her father’s harshness creates pressure that makes losing feel unbearable.
This does not excuse her decision to steal the science club’s remote, but it explains the fear behind it. Maribella’s mistake is more calculated than Peppi’s first-day shove, but the book treats both as actions that come from panic and pressure rather than simple evil.
Her bond with Peppi is also complicated. She depends on Peppi, calls her her only friend, and thanks her for not leaving when work becomes hard.
When Maribella leaves with her mother, she becomes one of the story’s clearest signs that children often carry problems their classmates cannot see.
Mr. Ramirez
Mr. Ramirez is the art club teacher, and his role is steady, supportive, and gently protective. He gives the art club space to create, but he also has to manage its frustration when the school denies it a fair table.
He does not have the loudest role in the book, yet his presence matters because he represents a kind of adult support that allows students to feel their interests are worth taking seriously. He understands the value of art and helps the club keep working even when school politics and rivalry make things tense.
Mr. Ramirez also becomes important when Peppi proposes the shared planetarium project. His willingness to support collaboration with Miss Tobins helps turn Peppi’s idea from a sketch into a school-wide solution.
He is not shown as perfect or all-powerful, but he is a calm adult who helps students organize their creativity rather than dismissing it.
Miss Tobins
Miss Tobins is the science teacher and science club supervisor, and she is more open-minded than the art-versus-science conflict might suggest. She recognizes that Peppi’s mermaid drawing can become a science assignment, which shows that she does not treat science as narrow or joyless.
Her decision to assign Jaime as Peppi’s tutor creates the condition for one of the book’s central friendships, even though she does not fully understand the emotional history between them. Miss Tobins can be strict when the science club behaves unsafely, but she also becomes excited by invention and discovery.
Her comment about Leonardo da Vinci helps Peppi understand that art and science are not enemies. In Awkward, Miss Tobins represents the adult perspective that students eventually need to reach: curiosity matters more than rivalry, and knowledge can cross boundaries.
Her faith in Peppi’s abilities also helps Peppi see herself as more than just an art student who struggles in science.
The Principal
The principal functions as the authority figure who turns the clubs’ rivalry into a formal challenge. His judgment that neither club is contributing enough to the school frustrates the students, but it also forces them to think beyond themselves.
He is not portrayed as cruel, though his decisions can feel blunt. By making the students compete for the club fair table, he unintentionally increases the hostility between art and science.
Later, when both sides behave badly, he withdraws the reward and suspends club activities. This punishment seems harsh to the students, but it pushes Peppi to recognize that the conflict has become destructive.
The principal’s final condition that both clubs receive tables side by side shows that he values cooperation once the students prove they can work together. His role is mostly structural: he creates pressure, responds to misconduct, and eventually rewards a better solution.
Jenny
Jenny is the school newspaper editor, and she helps connect the art club’s talent to the wider school community. Her visit to the art club gives the students practical direction when they are struggling to create comics about school life.
Jenny’s role may be smaller than Peppi’s or Maribella’s, but she represents a student who already understands responsibility and publication. She takes the comic feature seriously, praises the finished work, and gives the art club a real audience.
Through Jenny, the book shows that creative work matters more when it communicates with others. She also helps raise the stakes when the newspaper website is hacked, because the attack uses the same public platform that had earlier validated the art club’s work.
Jenny’s presence makes the school feel larger than two rival clubs.
Akilah
Akilah works with Jenny on the school newspaper and supports the art club’s comic project. She helps provide advice and inspiration when the artists are unsure what kind of school-life comics they should make.
Like Jenny, Akilah is part of the student media world, which gives her a role outside the art-versus-science conflict. She helps the art club understand audience, deadlines, and the need to make their work readable and relevant.
Her appearance during the website hacking incident also shows how quickly creative and public work can become vulnerable when school conflict turns nasty. Akilah’s role is not large, but she contributes to the sense that Berrybrook Middle School is a real community made of many smaller groups.
Jason Nguen
Jason Nguen is the travel writer and explorer who speaks to the students during their trip to the Discovery Center. He represents curiosity about the wider world.
His stories about travel, science, and natural environments capture Peppi’s imagination and briefly move her beyond the ordinary anxieties of school life. His presentation helps set the tone for the geocaching activity that follows, where Peppi and Jaime begin to connect in a more relaxed way.
Jason’s role is temporary but meaningful because he opens a window onto adventure, observation, and learning outside the classroom. For Peppi, his talk feeds both her imagination and her visual thinking.
He helps create the conditions for a moment when science feels exciting rather than intimidating.
Jaime’s Mother
Jaime’s mother is warm, perceptive, and artistically gifted. She uses a wheelchair, but the story does not reduce her to that detail; instead, she is shown as a working artist with skill, humor, and emotional intelligence.
She immediately understands that Peppi is important to Jaime and gently identifies her as the girl who pushed him. Her response is not angry or shaming.
She gives Peppi the chance to say what she already knows: that she is sorry. Jaime’s mother becomes a moral guide without sounding severe.
She explains that Peppi should apologize directly to Jaime, and this advice leads Peppi to create her drawn apology. Her art also inspires Peppi because it shows a grown-up version of creative life.
In the book, she bridges Peppi’s artistic identity and Jaime’s personal world.
Jaime’s Father
Jaime’s father is inventive, welcoming, and closely connected to Jaime’s interest in making things. His workshop is full of machines, and he shares the geocache he is preparing with Jaime.
Through him, Jaime’s scientific curiosity feels grounded in family life rather than only in school competition. He also helps make Jaime’s home feel inviting to Peppi.
His machines and projects show the practical, playful side of science and engineering. Unlike the school rivalry, his version of science is not about proving superiority.
It is about building, experimenting, and sharing excitement. He helps Peppi see that Jaime’s interests are part of a rich personal world, not just a club identity.
Peppi’s Mother
Peppi’s mother appears mainly as a caring parent who comes to help after Peppi’s bike accident and later joins the visit to Jaime’s family. Her role is quieter than the school characters, but she contributes to Peppi’s sense of safety.
She trusts the situation enough for Peppi to spend time with Jaime’s family, which helps the friendship grow outside school pressure. Peppi’s mother also helps show that Peppi has a stable home base where she can reflect, draw, and process difficult events.
While she does not drive the plot, she supports the emotional environment that allows Peppi to recover from embarrassment and make better choices.
Peppi’s Family
Peppi’s family appears most clearly when they visit Jaime’s house for the barbeque. Their presence matters because it moves Peppi and Jaime’s friendship beyond secret school interactions and into family acceptance.
The visit gives Peppi a chance to see Jaime as a whole person, not merely as a tutor or science club member. Peppi’s family also helps create a contrast with Maribella’s family situation.
Peppi has worries and shame, but her home life is not shown as threatening. This difference helps the reader understand why Peppi has room to grow through guilt, while Maribella’s fear is tied to deeper instability.
Maribella’s Father
Maribella’s father is one of the most troubling adult figures in the story. He speaks harshly, expects performance, and makes Maribella afraid of disappointing him.
His insult toward Maribella’s mother reveals a home environment shaped by anger and control. He never needs many scenes to influence the story because the effect of his behavior is visible in Maribella’s anxiety.
Her desperation to win the club competition makes more sense after Peppi sees how her father treats her. He represents the pressure that can sit behind a student’s public confidence.
Maribella’s leadership, perfectionism, and eventual sabotage are all shaped by the fear he creates.
Maribella’s Mother
Maribella’s mother is mostly seen through the crisis that leads her and Maribella to leave home. Although she is not given many direct scenes, her decision to go to Maribella’s grandmother’s house suggests a serious attempt to protect herself and her daughter.
She becomes important because she changes Maribella’s future and reveals that the family situation has reached a breaking point. Her departure with packed bags confirms that the tension in Maribella’s home is not a small argument but a major rupture.
Through her, the book shows that adult conflicts can shape children’s choices at school in ways classmates may not understand.
Maribella’s Neighbor
Maribella’s neighbor is a minor character, but the neighbor provides key information when Peppi goes to Maribella’s house. By explaining that there was a loud fight and that Maribella and her mother left with packed bags, the neighbor helps Peppi understand why Maribella disappeared.
This character’s role is functional, but it also gives the moment a sense of realism. Sometimes children learn fragments of adult situations through neighbors, overheard remarks, and visible signs rather than full explanations.
The neighbor helps shift Peppi’s view of Maribella from frustration to concern.
The Mean Kids
The mean kids are the students who mock Peppi and Jaime, beginning with Peppi’s first day and continuing later when they steal Peppi’s sketchbook. They represent casual cruelty: the kind of teasing that adults may underestimate but that can deeply affect students.
Their mockery triggers Peppi’s first mistake, and their later invasion of her apology forces her to stand up for herself. They are not complex in the same way as Peppi, Jaime, or Maribella, but they are important because they create the social fear that shapes Peppi’s choices.
By the end of Awkward, the art and science students stand together against them, which shows that the school community has changed. The bullies lose power when their targets are no longer isolated.
The Science Club Members
The science club members are rivals, pranksters, inventors, and eventually collaborators. Some of them behave arrogantly, especially when they interrupt the art club or accuse it of sabotage.
Their project, the solar plane, proves that they are talented and hardworking, but their competitive attitude helps fuel the conflict. They also participate in unsafe or disruptive experiments, which causes trouble with Miss Tobins.
Still, the book does not portray them as villains. Jaime’s presence in the club complicates Peppi’s assumptions, and the geocaching activity shows that science club students can be fun and cooperative.
When they agree to work on the planetarium, they show that their skills can serve a shared purpose instead of a rivalry.
The Art Club Members
The art club members are creative, expressive, and often defensive. They feel overlooked by the school, especially when denied a club fair table, and their frustration makes them eager to prove themselves.
Their comics for the school newspaper show that they can contribute meaningfully to school life, but their resentment toward the science club also makes them quick to celebrate the other club’s problems and consider retaliation. Some members struggle with deadlines and motivation, which places extra pressure on Maribella and Peppi.
Like the science club, the art club grows when it stops defining itself against another group. Its members learn that creativity can work alongside science rather than compete with it.
The Science Club Boys with the Drone and Rocket
The boys who use the drone and later aim a rocket near lockers represent the reckless side of the science club. They are energetic and inventive, but they do not always think about safety, respect, or consequences.
Their actions add humor and chaos, yet they also worsen the art club’s resentment. Miss Tobins has to correct them because curiosity without judgment can become destructive.
These boys help show why the science club’s confidence sometimes comes across as arrogance. At the same time, their experiments reveal genuine excitement about building and testing things.
Their growth depends on learning that invention should not come at the expense of other people’s space or safety.
The Students Who Bully Peppi and Jaime During the Trip
The students who teased Peppi and Jaime at the beginning reappear during the Discovery Center activity, and their presence reminds Peppi of the embarrassment she still carries. When Peppi and Jaime’s group manages to leave them behind and solve the puzzles without them, the story gives Peppi a chance to experience teamwork without being controlled by their judgment.
These students are minor, but they represent the lasting effect of first impressions and public shame. Their role also helps bring Peppi and Jaime together because the two of them share the experience of being targeted by the same kind of mockery.
The Newspaper Staff
The newspaper staff, represented most clearly through Jenny and Akilah, gives the art club an outlet and a deadline. As a group, they matter because they transform art from a private club activity into public contribution.
Their interest in the comics validates Peppi’s idea and gives the art club a real way to serve the school. The later hacking of the newspaper website shows how public communication can become a battleground when students use it to accuse and shame others.
The newspaper staff helps frame one of the book’s quieter ideas: creative work has responsibility attached to it once it reaches an audience.
Pepper
Pepper, Peppi’s bunny, is not an active plot character, but the bunny matters as part of Peppi’s identity as an artist. When Peppi talks about drawing Pepper, Jaime’s mother connects with her through animal art and shows her professional drawings.
Pepper therefore becomes a small but meaningful bridge between Peppi’s home life, her art, and Jaime’s family. The bunny also reflects Peppi’s gentler side.
She is a girl who draws animals, notices details, and processes feelings visually. Even a small detail like Pepper helps build Peppi’s creative world.
Themes
Apology, Repair, and Moral Courage
Peppi’s first major action is a mistake, and the story refuses to let that mistake vanish. Her guilt follows her because she knows Jaime did not deserve to be shoved.
What makes this theme powerful is that the book does not treat apology as a single easy sentence. Peppi has to face embarrassment, fear of rejection, and the possibility that Jaime may not forgive her.
Her drawn apology fits her character because art becomes the language she can use when speech fails. The later remote incident expands this idea.
Peppi must decide whether loyalty to Maribella is worth hiding a wrong action. Returning the remote is another form of repair, even though it damages Jaime’s trust for a while.
The story suggests that moral courage often happens after a bad choice, not before it. Courage is not presented as public heroism from the start.
It is the decision to stop avoiding the person you hurt, return what should not have been taken, and speak up when everyone else keeps fighting.
Art and Science as Shared Ways of Seeing
The conflict between the art club and science club begins with the assumption that the two groups are opposites. The artists see the science students as arrogant and disruptive, while the science students see the artists as weak competitors.
Yet the story repeatedly challenges that division. Peppi’s mermaid drawing becomes a science diagram, Jaime’s inventions have a creative quality, and the planetarium project depends on both visual design and scientific knowledge.
Miss Tobins’s mention of Leonardo da Vinci gives Peppi a model for combining these worlds rather than choosing one. Awkward argues that art and science are not enemies because both require observation, imagination, experimentation, and communication.
The planetarium is the clearest example: it needs artistic beauty to create wonder and scientific structure to make the concept work. The students’ final success comes only when they stop protecting narrow identities and begin using their skills together.
The theme values curiosity over labels.
Peer Pressure, Shame, and the Fear of Being Judged
Peppi’s first-day mistake comes from social pressure. She does not shove Jaime because she dislikes him; she does it because other students’ teasing makes her panic.
This pattern continues throughout the story. Peppi often knows what she should do but hesitates because she fears how people will react.
The art and science clubs also behave badly under group pressure. Students insult rivals, celebrate their failures, and feel forced to prove loyalty by opposing the other side.
Maribella’s pressure is even more intense because it comes from home as well as school. Her fear of losing is tied to fear of disappointing her father, so the club competition becomes much bigger in her mind than a fair table.
The theme shows how shame can make decent people act against their values. At the same time, the story shows that judgment loses some of its power when people stop facing it alone.
Peppi becomes braver after building real bonds with Jaime and after seeing that others can stand with her.
Community, Competition, and Cooperation
The school club contest begins as a way to measure contribution, but it quickly turns into a source of hostility. Both clubs want recognition, and both have legitimate reasons to feel proud of their work.
The problem is that competition teaches them to see the other group’s success as their own failure. The art club’s comics and the science club’s solar plane are both valuable projects, yet the rivalry makes students focus on sabotage, accusations, and revenge.
The principal’s punishment forces them to confront the cost of that attitude. Peppi’s planetarium idea changes the question from “Which club deserves the table?” to “What can both clubs create together?” This shift is the heart of the theme.
A healthy community does not require everyone to be the same; it requires different talents to serve a shared purpose. By ending with the two clubs sitting together and defending Peppi and Jaime, the story shows that cooperation is not just a nicer outcome than competition.
It is a stronger one.
