Setting the Stage by Lindsay Champion: Review
Welcome to my review of Setting the Stage by Lindsay Champion! I’m still working on incorporating more middle grade into my rotation, and this was a great addition to my TBR.
Title: Setting the Stage (Cast vs Crew)
Author: Lindsay Champion
Genre: MG Contemporary
Publisher: Pixel+Ink
Pub Date: 10/21/25
Description
The full story of a junior high musical production, told exclusively from the POV of the kids backstage. It’s High School Musical, from behind the scenes…without the high school.
Every cast depends on its stage crew. But what happens when they hate each other? SETTING THE STAGE is the first act in a trilogy that tells the whole story!
Eighth grader Ella Amani has been waiting her whole life to be the stage manager of the middle school musical, and this is her year!
Somehow she’ll have to find jobs for Willow, who’s doing stage crew instead of detention, and Sebastian, a shy sixth grader whose sister is the star of the show. She’ll have to wrangle Kevin, the clumsy new kid who was homeschooled on a boat, and Levi, her best friend, who used to tell her everything.
Still, Ella’s pretty sure she can handle the crew. The cast? That’s a different story. They’re ungrateful, they treat the crew like servants, and when Ella finally pushes back, they start playing pranks!
Setting the Stage is a behind-the-scenes look at the drama of drama club from the crew’s point of view.
Review
Setting the Stage was nostalgia central. I went to a small private school in middle school, so we didn’t have a theater program, but this book was my high school theater experience to a T from the canoodling to the pranks to the unappreciation of crew by the cast to the hierarchy to the stress of tech week. My best friend was stage manager, and Ella’s experience was similar to her own in some ways.
I really enjoyed getting to see different perspectives of the crew members, and while this book will be great for theater lovers, I also think kids who have no experience with theater but are curious will find it eye-opening, and it might even tempt them to get involved themselves. One of us! One of us! Another highlight of the book was that the kids all had real things happening in their lives that affected how they showed up for the actual show. Having to take care of siblings. Dealing with the pull between a foster and birth family. Adjusting to a new town. Crushes gone wrong and right.
I wish I didn’t have to wait for book 2 to see what happens with the show, but I’m waiting eagerly.
*Thank you to Holiday House Peachtree for the finished copy. All opinions are my own.*
Author
Lifelong theater geek Lindsay Champion made her stage debut as a tiger in her second-grade musical. Since then, she’s built sets, run the light board, operated the spotlight and (her favorite) stage managed. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and was the Features Editor at Broadway.com. She is the author of the YA novel Someday, Somewhere.
Where to Buy
Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Amazon
