Sixth Grade, Glommers, Norks and Me

By Lisa Papademetriou
Rating: 3 3/4 stars
Reviewed by Noelle

Allie and Tam are best friends about to start 6th grade at a new school--a magnet school for smart kids--and they are worried about who they are going to know, what the other kids will wear, what their classes will be like and so on. Allie is more the jock type, and is really into soccer. Tam is more the pretty fashionable one. But they've been best friends forever, and nothing is going to change that! Well, until they start 6th grade. Allie is not pleased to find Tam hanging out with Renee--a girl from their past that they supposedly didn't like. Allie starts feeling very left out by the pair, and things don't seem to get any better when she has to play a new position on the soccer team and she gets stuck with a real nerd for her lab partner in science. But as Allie works through the hurt of growing apart from her best friend, she finds she has new friends on her soccer team, that befriending a nork (a cross between a nerd and dork) isn't that bad, and that she is better off being her own person than a "glommer." This is an engaging story about starting middle school and doing a little bit of growing up and standing up for what's important. Girls will definitely identify with Allie and her trials and maybe hope for new installments about her life.