Ellen Outside the Lines

Ellen Outside the Lines is a realistic fiction, middle-grade novel written by A.J. Sass and originally published in 2022. The novel features a protagonist who has autism and seeks to find her place in the world, and many of her experiences are based on Sass’s own life with autism and as a nonbinary person. Ellen Outside the Lines takes place in Barcelona, Spain, where 13-year-old Ellen is taking a class trip and Finding Belonging Among Friends. Through her experiences in Barcelona, Ellen finds strength in Accepting the Unpredictability of Life as she experiences an intense inner journey and works on Embracing Self-Discovery and Freedom of Expression. The novel was a Sydney Taylor Book Award Honor Book and a Booklist Editors’ Choice book, as well as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.

This guide refers to the 2022 Hatchette Book Group edition of the novel.

Plot Summary

Thirteen-year-old Ellen Katz is preparing for a summer class trip to Barcelona. She waits for her best friend, Laurel, to call so that they can book their flight seats together, but when Laurel never calls, Ellen starts to panic. However, she reminds herself that she should only worry about what she can control, and she rocks back and forth to the hum of the ceiling fan to soothe her emotions. Ellen manages to call Laurel’s mother to see where her friend is, but when she freezes, her father (called “Abba” in Hebrew) steps in to help. He gets the seats booked with Laurel’s mother, and Ellen calms down. 

The next day, Ellen and her parents pick up Laurel and head to the airport. Laurel apologizes for not calling the day before but admits that she was shopping with her other friend, Sophie-Anne. At the airport, Abba asks Ellen if she wants him to give her space on the trip, and she says no. (Ellen has autism and prefers to have Abba around in case something goes wrong.) The class Spanish teacher, Señor L, introduces a new student named Isa Martinez, whom Ellen notices doesn’t really look like a girl or a boy. Before boarding the plane, Señor L announces the plan to hold a city-wide scavenger hunt in Barcelona; Ellen was not expecting this. She usually plans everything out in lists in her dot diary, and surprises throw her off-balance. On the plane, Ellen and Laurel sit together, but when Ellen wakes from a nap, she finds that Laurel is sitting with her other friends, Sophie-Anne and Madison. Ellen’s classmate Andy is now beside her, and he happens to be a huge fan of Abba’s graphic novel series. 

When the class arrives in Barcelona, the first thing they notice is the heat. Their hotel has a large owl statue on top of it, which Ellen takes a picture of, and then the students are assigned their rooms. Ellen and Laurel share a room, and their bathroom is conjoined with Sophie-Anne and Madison’s room. Everyone heads to the dining hall to eat, and Ellen meets Meritxell and Xavi, who visit Barcelona every summer. Ellen thinks that Meritxell is cute, but the other girls react poorly when she says this. On the first night, Ellen can’t sleep and decides to call her mom. Afterward, she sees the team list for the scavenger hunt and finds out that she and Laurel are on different teams. The next morning, Laurel finds out the same and encourages Ellen to try and make friends with her teammates. Ellen’s team, which is composed of Isa, Andy, and Gibs, is an unconventional assortment of personalities, but everyone gets along well together. They introduce themselves, and Isa announces that they use they/them pronouns. It takes some time for the others to get used to this, but the group accepts Isa as they are.

Each of the scavenger hunt clues is written in Spanish, which means they have to be translated before they can be solved. The first clue, Ellen believes, points them to a church called La Sagrada Família, which was designed by Antoni Gaudi. The church is beautiful, but while there, Ellen realizes that she was mistaken in her assumption. She apologizes to the team, and Gibs is slightly irritated but recovers quickly. Still, Ellen goes to bed that night feeling guilty for her error. 

The next morning, Laurel tells Ellen that her team hasn’t started the scavenger hunt yet, and Ellen starts to worry that they won’t finish. Laurel asks Ellen to see if she can switch teams, and Ellen agrees to ask Abba. Ellen texts back and forth with her teammates, who seem to have forgiven her for yesterday’s mistake. She likes her new team and wants to stick with them, but she also doesn’t want to disappoint Laurel. Ellen decides not to ask Abba to switch teams, but she also doesn’t tell Laurel this; instead, she lets her believe that Abba said no. Ellen and her team go to La Pedrera the next day, another building designed by Gaudi, and explore its interior. They decide that it matches the clue and consider themselves successful. Ellen finds a postcard in a shop that reads, “Tomorrow we will do beautiful things” (125), a quote by Gaudi that she finds intriguing. That night, Ellen meets up with Andy and Isa in the hotel courtyard to try and figure out the second clue; it leads them to a shopping strip called La Rambla. The next day, the team goes to the location, and Ellen finds it instantly overwhelming. There are too many sounds, sights, and smells, and Ellen shuts down. Abba and Isa take her hands and lead her to a quiet shop where she can regain a sense of calm. When she recovers, the team goes for lunch at a nearby cafe.

Everyone except Gibs meets up in the courtyard again, and Andy admits that he has a crush on Xavi. He doesn’t yet want the rest of the class to know that he is gay, so he asks Ellen and Isa to keep it a secret. Ellen’s team splits up for the morning, with Ellen and Isa hanging out together while the others go to a sports museum. This arrangement gives them a chance to get to know one another, and Isa explains that they are pansexual. Ellen isn’t sure exactly how she would label herself, but she knows that she has no interest in boys. Ellen and Isa invite Meritxell and Xavi out on Saturday, and the two agree to come. The next day, Ellen and her team go back to La Rambla to take pictures and confirm that it is indeed the location of the second clue. Ellen buys a postcard of the owl on her hotel and calls home with Abba in the evening. 

On Saturday, Isa, Ellen and Abba go out for lunch and meet up with Meritxell and Xavi, who admit they would rather go shopping with Laurel and her friends than visit tourist sites. Ellen decides to go with them and Laurel, even though she knows that she should be with her team. While she is with Laurel’s friends, Ellen is told that wearing her noise-cancelling headphones is rude and that her dad is not eating kosher food on the trip. Laurel tries to make up for the bad day by having a sleepover with Ellen, but Laurel selects activities like makeovers and a cheerleading documentary, in which Ellen has no interest. Ellen agrees to let Laurel and her friends make her over anyway, but she hates the way she looks. The girls try to get Ellen to give them answers for the scavenger hunt, but Ellen refuses, which upsets Laurel. Ellen goes to see her teammates during the night, crying as she explains that she didn’t want to be made over. Isa and Ellen go to Isa’s room, where Isa helps Ellen take off the makeup. Ellen asks Isa about the logistics behind having two sets of pronouns, and Isa also explains the concept of gender roles and why they don’t agree with it. Ellen goes to bed feeling happy and understood by Isa, and she realizes that it is actually Isa she likes, not Meritxell.

Laurel unknowingly reveals the answer to the third clue for Ellen’s team, which annoys them, and Ellen realizes that Laurel is cheating by listening to other teams’ conversations. The teams take a cable car up to Montjuïc Castle, where Ellen mentions to Laurel that Andy is gay. The next day, Laurel wants to hang out with Ellen’s team again, but Ellen’s team is uninterested. Laurel’s team follows them to Park Güell anyway, and Ellen can’t resist helping Laurel by telling her that she has the first clue wrong. She also admits that she never asked Abba to switch teams, which causes Laurel to feel betrayed. When Andy finds out that Ellen told someone he was gay, he also feels betrayed and refuses to speak to Ellen. 

That night, Ellen sneaks out of the hotel to stare up at the owl, but it doesn’t help much. She accidentally locks herself out of the building and has to call Isa to let her inside, but she and Isa are caught by Abba on the way back to their rooms. Abba takes Ellen for a walk, and she explains that she has hurt all of her friends. She asks Abba if he has been eating kosher, and he admits that he is not as strict about it as Ellen and her mother are. He also confesses to being bisexual and describes the sense of rejection that he felt in his own community while growing up. Ellen starts to see that she can’t categorize people the way she always thought she could. 

When the teacher finds out that Ellen left the hotel and helped Laurel with the scavenger hunt, he decides that she will have to stay in the hotel on the last day in Barcelona. Ellen uses the opportunity to apologize to Andy for betraying his trust, and she also encourages Andy and Isa to attend the Pride Parade later that day. Gibs accompanies them, as does Abba, and Ellen stays at the hotel. She gets a call from her teammates and enjoys seeing the joy and celebration of diversity happening at Pride. On the last night, the class boards a large boat, and each team presents their adventures in the form of a slideshow and an original clue. Ellen and Laurel decide to sit with their new friends on the flight home, and Ellen spends her last morning in Barcelona with her teammates on the roof of the hotel. She thinks about the future and knows that it is uncertain, but for the first time, she accepts this unpredictability.