VIOLET IN BLOOM

Fifth grade BFFs Katie-Rose, Yasaman, Violet and Camilla ride again in this stride-hitting second entry in the Flower Power series (Luv Ya Bunches, 2009). Once again, readers drop in on the girls during a particularly eventful, anxiety-riddled week at Rivendell Elementary: Katie-Rose struggles with her concern that sneaky Natalia might be weaseling her way into Yasaman's good graces, while Milla wrestles with her longstanding crush on adorkable Max and Violet finally visits her mother in the mental health clinic and champions the class outcast, Cyril, taking a stand against the epically odious Modessa. All of this takes place against a backdrop of youthful nutrition-related activism—Yasaman discovers that their school-selected snacks, Cheezy Nips, are full of trans fats, contain no cheese and are made by a company that engages in animal cruelty. Myracle is particularly adept at conveying the hilariously, touchingly messy inner lives of preteens, and with the first book's exposition out of the way, all the flower friends' wonderful neuroses, blunders, kindnesses and grace notes blossom into a realistic, easy-to-relate-to riot of pre-adolescent exuberance. A triumph. (Fiction. 9-13)