MARY MARGARET, CENTER STAGE

Mary Margaret, MacLean’s irrepressible heroine, has a big personality and a mouth to match. In this character’s delightful second go-round, Mary Margaret has to cope with a newborn baby sister at home and new classmate at school. Perfect Ellie has joined her class, a quiet, well-behaved girl who bests Mary Margaret in spelling, math and social studies, to say nothing of following directions. This drives MacLean’s hypercompetitive nine-year-old protagonist up the wall, especially since her beloved teacher, Mr. Mooney, seems to favor Ellie as well. But the voice-projecting heroine is sure that there’s one thing she can do better than the shy, retiring Ellie: act. So when Ellie wins the role of Cinderella, Mary Margaret needs a plan that will put her back in the spotlight. Despite some hard-to-buy action and predictable life lessons, humor abounds, and the pacing and adroit use of secondary characters keep the action flowing. Girls should appreciate Mary Margaret’s dilemmas and find the story both amusing and suspenseful. (Fiction. 7-11)