ROSY COLE

Witty, engaging Rosy Cole has discovered real beauty in her new friend, Christi McCurry. Christi is a child model who turns heads as she and Rosy walk down Manhattan's Madison Avenue, and Rosy craves the kind of attention that Christi receives. She decides to become beautiful too. With the help of Christi's cute brother, Donald, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rosy finds a new look that makes her an overnight sensation. A home perm, some flowers for her hair, a romantic dress, and Rosy is as pretty as a picture. Everybody is enchanted with her beauty, and nobody more than Rosy herself. She can't concentrate on anything but her loveliness: She doesn't do her homework; she offends Donald. When Rosy is literally on display in a local dress store (as a live mannequin), she realizes that being beautiful isn't that much fun. Making faces at Donald through the window, Rosy stops being lovely on the outside and becomes her own lovely-on-the-inside self. A good time from Greenwald (My Fabulous New Life, 1993, etc.) and a painless lesson in the true meaning of beauty. (Fiction. 8-12)