THE WEIRDER THE BETTER

When Jamie carves out her own niche in the social hierarchy, she makes quite a splash.

Jamie isn't looking forward to starting sixth grade at her 10th school since kindergarten (her 11th if you count the two days she spent at Magley Wood Elementary before she was expelled). Her mother swears that this time they'll stay in one place long enough for her to make friends. “Be whatever you want to be!” her grandmother says in a rare lucid moment. Confronted with school clubs populated by mean, popular girls, Jamie forms her own club: The Outcasts, for kids “the weirder the better.” The club members have quirks aplenty: a glass eye, 12 toes, nine body piercings. One member has four mothers and three fathers, while another escaped her homeland as a refugee. Club outings are sweetly kooky, ranging from a private showing of demolition-derby practice to an afternoon volunteering at a shelter. Their popularity grows, and the Outcasts turn away many would-be weirdos (sadly, without ever examining the hypocrisy of being outcasts who exclude perfectly nice classmates for being "just average, regular kids"). The principal, cartoonishly mean, seethes at this disruption of the social order, and demands the Outcasts disband.