Middle School Girls

Meet Kylie Carson. She’s a fourth grader with a big problem. How will she make friends at her new school? Should she tell her classmates she loves monster movies? Forget it. Play the part of a turnip in the school play? Disaster! Then Kylie comes up with a delicious idea: What if she starts a cupcake club?

Her life is a shadow of a life. Her future is not her own to fashion. Her family is a tangle of secrets. She cannot read. She cannot write. But she is Parastrata Ava, the Captain's eldest daughter, the so girl of a long-range crewe - her obligations are grave and many. And when she makes a mistake, in a fragrant orchard of lemons, the consequences are deadly. There are some who would say, "there but for the Mercies go I". There are some who would say Parastrata Ava is just a silly earthstruck girl who got what was coming to her.

Seventh grader Estefania "Stef" Soto is itching to shake off the onion-and-cilantro embrace of Tia Perla, her family's taco truck. She wants nothing more than for her dad to get a normal job and for Tia Perla to be put out to pasture. It's no fun being known as the "Taco Queen" at school. But just when new city regulations are proposed, and her family's livelihood is threatened, she will have to become the truck's unlikely champion.