Octavia told me the best secret I've ever heard and she made me promise not to tell anybody. So I'm not going to tell anybody."" The rest of the book is an elaboration at tedious length on that second sentence--noting who won't be told, how popular Octavia is, who might be told if someone were told, what might be gained by swapping the secret, and how super-valuable this particular secret is. Kids are likely to ask ""So what?"" long before the little girl's accidental revelation of the secret's predictable content--that ""Octavia and I are best friends."" And Litzinger, who seems to have borrowed a few tricks from Joseph Low, but none of his many virtues, clutters the pages with flyaway visual footnotes and non-functioning, swirly forms--perhaps in a futile attempt to create a groovy, freewheeling background.