Amalee

If you are the parent of a middle-school age kid, you'll love this book! If you're a 9-12 year-old, you should read this book because it's all about what life can be like if you're dealing with peer pressure, and normal (and not-so-normal) everyday stuff. Even if you're a boy, you will enjoy this book. It may look like a girlie book, but it's not. Anyways, we all know it's not a perfect world we live in.

The special spin on this story is that Amalee is just a normal 11-year-old girl who goes to middle school and has a ton of peer pressure issues to deal with. She has to decide whether being popular means being mean. You'll learn what happens when she stands up to her friends when they hurt her. You can feel Amalee's pain and frustration and fear by reading this book. She has to deal with friends who turn out to be pretty mean to her. Then, things go from bad to a real nightmare when her dad gets seriously sick. Can Amalee deal with the added stress of not knowing how sick her dad really is? Were her dad's friends being fair to her when they don't tell her how sick her dad is?

This book is about the power of friendships. The importance and strength of friendships and the trial and tribulations, the ups and downs, of special interactions with your friends and even your parent's friends. It's also about awareness. It shows that kids at age 11 can be very egocentric and that when something bad happens (like a parent getting very sick), the world keeps going and it can be a frightening time. Emotions run high in this book and Dar Williams creates a story that is anything but predictable.

In fact, this author has crafted a book with very believable characters. Amalee sounds a lot like most 11-year-olds. It isn't easy growing up in a single parent household. Amalee is the last person in the world to complain about that! But when her dad gets very sick, she gets scared. Really scared. By reading this book, you will relate to Amalee. I don't think you'll put this book down until you read all 180 pages. I didn't!

Two thumb's up to Dar Williams and to Scholastic, for discovering another great writer for kids in that in-between age. Although I'm not very familiar with her singing and songwriting , I can tell you that I enjoyed her writing voice immensely. I really look forward to Dar Williams' next book. I think you will, too.

A highly recommended read by The Review Zone.com

This book should be in every public and school library so that middle school kids know that they are not alone.