![]() ![]() As Pixie takes risks, she moves beyond self-consciousness and even faces her former nemesis. The strongest chapters are the lively accounts of how Pixie and Dan organize and run parties without Mom. Occasionally, her confessions reveal a tendency that seems to veer beyond shyness into acute anxiety. Pixie narrates in the present tense, with plenty of flashbacks, musings, and editorializing, running the full gamut from humorous to dead serious. Meanwhile, she and her less-than-popular friends join a class-president campaign for the seemingly self-assured Sophie, a white classmate whose personality does as quick an about-face as Pixie’s by story’s end. For years, she has been an organized, quietly competent part of the business. ![]() Pixie is infuriated when her father announces, “We need you to be a mermaid next Saturday.” “Next Saturday” means in approximately two weeks, and Pixie is determined to avoid the assignment. Mom had to leave over a month ago to visit her own ailing mother in Fresno, so the white 12-year-old and her dad, Dan the Man, must run the family business-preparing, producing, and running birthday parties-without charismatic Mom. ![]() Pixie has contentedly played introvert to her extroverted parents, but now circumstances demand that she expand her limited comfort zone. ![]()
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