children's fiction. Eleven-year-old Winnie deals with the trials of life in the 5th/6th grades as she and her best friend drift apart. ( )

Winnie knows that change isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when it means her best friend, Amanda, might be dropping her for someone else. Throw in a grumpy teenage sister, a cat who gets trapped in the wall, and a crush who has pinkeye, and you've got one big mess--one that Winnie's not going to clean up! Winnie's decided that she's going to remain exactly the same, no matter what the rest of the world does. But every month brings crazy adventures. A lot can change in a year . . .maybe even Winnie

Myracle pegs the early middle school age perfectly in the second book of the Winnie series. As in "Ten," there is one chapter for each month of Winnie's eleventh year. But unlike "Ten," there is an overall arc to the stories in those chapters: as we grow up, sometimes friends grow apart. Winnie's best friend forever, Amanda, is increasingly hanging out with a new girl at school, (one who is a conceited jerk), and Winnie feels more and more left out. Meanwhile, she discovers to her surprise, that she actually ~likes~ Diana... the very unpopular, socially awkward girl. Each month tells its own story, but the book as a whole is about Winnie drifting away from Amanda and becoming best friends with Diana.

Side note: I really don't like the covers of this series. It looks like a frilly, silly, girlie girl series, but there is much more substance to the books than that. Winnie thinks deeply, is self-aware, and shares a surprisingly realistic spectrum of middle grade girl's feelings and the issues she deals with. Often the last few lines of the chapter, set the whole thing off perfectly. Extremely well-written, but completely accessible and unpretentious. ( )

Felt like I was eavesdropping on my daughter and her friends, or on any number of the fifth- and sixth-grade girls who come into my school library.... Lauren Myracle definitely understands the eleven-year-old psyche. Can't wait to get this in the hands of my daughter-- she's going to eat it up. ( )

This is a good book. Great for teens. ( )