LUCY ROSE

The dynamic, self-assured Lucy Rose continues her fourth-grade diary entries following the Christmas break to the end of the school year. Still busy as ever, Lucy Rose spends lots of time planning and unsuccessfully executing several money-making schemes to help best friend Jonique and her parents build a new bakery from an old plumbing store in disrepair. Despite her can-do attitude, Lucy Rose is dismayed by classmate Ashley’s incessant teasing, creating rumors about Lucy’s romance with good friend Melonhead. Yet when Ashley’s true reasons for her own unhappiness are inadvertently revealed through an outright lie, a new dilemma emerges for Lucy Rose. She would REALLY like to expose Ashley for a satisfying payback, but isn’t sure she should. Kelly continues her protagonist’s winning chatty journal with enough wordplay and banter to keep kids and adults sympathetically nodding their heads for this young heroine. Lucy Rose sports an attitude on life’s ups and downs that is “excellent-O” with the supportive cast of friends and family that readers have come to enjoy. “D-double-D-licious”–sounding recipes for “Lucy Roses” cupcakes and “Sweet Joniques” cookies appended in the same fun-loving style for kids to follow. (Fiction. 9-12)