THE DOUBLE-DIGIT CLUB

When nine-year-old Sarah’s best friend Paige deserts her at the beginning of the summer to join the hated “Double-Digit Club”—only for those girls who have turned ten—a miserable season looms. Rather than seeking alternative fun, as her mother suggests, Sarah instead sulks, turning to Lois Lowry books and Miss B., her elderly blind neighbor, for diversion. A classic Bauer struggle with conscience ensues when Sarah, on an illicit trip upstairs, discovers Miss B.’s treasured antique doll and “borrows” it, thinking to use it to win Paige back—with entirely predictable results. Sarah emerges as a distinct character, bossy (and blissfully unaware of it), headstrong, and with a gift for language: she paints “word pictures” for Miss B. and always has the nom juste for a new doll. The territory this slim volume covers is familiar enough, but Bauer, as usual, covers it well. Sarah’s wrestling with her better self is thoroughly believable, as is the nasty cliquishness that leaves her on the outside looking in. It’s a small work, with small aspirations, but what it does, it does nicely. (Fiction. 7-11)