SIXTH GRADE

First American edition of an early work by the author of Book of Coupons (2001), and inspired by her own daughter’s experiences, this episodic tale of a young go-getter triumphing despite dreadful teachers and indifferent classmates will strike multiple chords of recognition in young readers. As junior high looms, then starts, Margot’s anxiety expresses itself in panic attacks at home—to which her distracted mother’s mantra, “You’ll get used to it,” becomes a running joke—and a compulsive, though ultimately frustrated, urge to organize her fellow students in school. The setting is French, and therefore mildly exotic, but Margot’s year includes plenty of all-too-familiar features, from September’s feeding frenzy in the store’s school-supply section to the daily lunchroom stampede, from minor pranks merry or hurtful, to a post-Christmas plague of MP3 players (an obvious bit of updating). While the lazy, clueless, arbitrary faculty takes a drubbing, Margot’s peers display a realistic mix of cruelty, confusion, and kindness—a crowd-pleasing combination that should make this as popular in English as its award-winning progenitor has been across the pond. (Fiction. 10-12)