THE ONE AND ONLY ZOË LAMA

Readers will fairly hear a laugh track in the background of this pleasant-enough tween-girl-sitcom-script of a story, companion to 2007’s The Invisible Rules of the Zoë Lama. Seventh-grader Zoë Monday Costello, aka “the Zoë Lama,” is used to being a sort of middle-grade guru to whom her “clients”—kids and grown-ups alike—tell secrets and turn for guidance. While she’s out of school with the chickenpox, a usurper—the seemingly perfect, sparkly “sixer” Devon (who has a few secrets of her own)—assumes Zoë’s role, dispensing advice in direct contravention of Zoë’s many unwritten rules and even plying her wiles to steal Zoë’s turn to host the class guinea pig for the weekend. Peppered with amusing spot illustrations, occasional IM exchanges and once-in-a-while typeface changes, the fluffy story of dueling diva-ettes is dressing for a few truly serious worries—housing issues, elder-care concerns and the terminal illness of a parent among them—which underlie the book’s more sober message of compromise, cooperation and compassion. (Fiction. 8-11)