LEXY FOR SHORT

Alexandra O'Connor makes a vow as she and her family travel to their new home in western Canada. People will be her hobby- and disaster, her foe! But Lexy's brimming exuberance, good humor and singular personality lead her from the prim and proper path, much to the delight of her readers. Clarence, the class clown, is especially hard to like and although Lexy refuses to be a ""school pigeon"" by tattling when Clarence begins ""making book"" on her to win in the track meet, she also refuses to run until Clarence abandons the syndicate! The girls' Halloween hen party inadvertently admits several roosters in disguise, with Clarence and crew in costume. Yet amid the hilarious all too real situations of neighborhood fun through the year, more serious problems arise for our heroine as well. Margaret, so aloof and friendless, eventually responds to Lexy's warmhearted interest and gradually the shell dissolves. During the slow transformation from tomboy to adolescent, Lexy recognizes her own errors too. How snobbish to avoid the Mueller girls because they seemed different. How ""snippy"" to regard people as a ""hobby"". A million girls will find something of themselves in Lexy's unique reactions to changing feelings and growing awareness as well as in the things she does and the way she thinks. Let's have more, Miss McKim, bright ialogue, authentic quandaries -- with this appealing Lexy.