Depicting with humor and insight the pressure to be outwardly perfect, this novel for ages 10-13 shows how one girl develops compassion for her own and others' imperfections.

For 13-year-old Isabelle Lee, whose father has recently died, everything's normal on the outside. Isabelle describes the scene at school with bemused accuracy--the self-important (but really not bad) English teacher, the boy that is constantly fixated on Ashley Barnum, the prettiest girl in class, and the dynamics of the lunchroom, where tables are turf in a all-eyes-open awareness of everybody's relative social...

Josie has never met her dad. To Josie, Paul Tucci is just a guy who got her mom pregnant and then moved away. But now Paul Tucci is back in town, and Josie has to deal with not one but two men in her life--her father and her first boyfriend.