57. Confetti Girl - Diana Lopez

for: Middle Grades
Little Brown, June 2009
200 pgs.
Rating: 4

Lina Flores is tall, skinny, and motherless. She has a huge sock collection, a best friend that she shares everything with, and a dad who's still grieving his wife's death and seems more interested in his books that he is in Lina. Her reaction is to blow off English (her dad's an English teacher), and she begins to fail. A sixth grader, she also acquires her first boyfriend.

She's lucky that her best friend, Vanessa, lives across the street. Vanessa's mother has been a man-hater since her divorce, and spends every free moment she has making cascarones from eggs, filling them with confetti and accumulating them. It's a good story about friendship, and the loss of a parent. Also included are lots of dichos: Los amigos mejores son libros - Books are your best friends, En boca cerrada no entran moscas - Flies can't enter a closed mouth....etc.

It started out great, petered out a little toward the end. Nevertheless, a good story that many girls will adore.