WHAT'S BUGGING BAILEY BLECKER?

Bailey’s life is lousy—yes, really louse-y, because she and all the other fifth graders have head lice! The Maine island–dweller's problems start when she opts to go to the mainland for school. What’s bugging her? Her birthday party is cancelled; her best friend doesn’t seem to be her best friend anymore; her pet parakeet gets loose and lost; her Mom threatens to cut her long hair, which she’s growing to donate to Care Through Hair for her Aunt Jess, who is bald from cancer—all this because of the lice. School embarrassment, the dreaded shampoo, a historic tea-party reenactment, ferry rides to school are all lathered into the plot, too. The story line has too many nit-picking contrivances: the teacher who always reacts positively, why the school nurse chooses to send her back to the classroom, Bailey’s gloomy stubbornness and the convenience of the historical society’s event. Purposeful in a lighthearted way but guaranteed to make your head—scalp and brain—itch! (Fiction. 8-11)