This isn’t about me. This story, I mean. So already you got a reason to hang it up. At least that’s what Mrs. Smith, our English teacher, says.

 

But the story is about 10-year-old Laney Grafton and the new girl in her class --- Lara Phelps, whom everyone bullies from the minute she shows up. Laney is just relieved to have someone else as a target of bullying. But instead of acting the way a bullied kid normally acts, this new girl returns kindness for a meanness that intensifies...until nobody remains unchanged, not even the reader.

 

In a unique and multi-layered story, with equal parts humor and angst, Laney communicates the art of storytelling as it happens, with chapter headings, such as: Character, Setting, Conflict, Rising Action, Climax. And she weaves an unforgettable tale of a new girl who transforms an entire class and, in the process, reveals the best and worst in all of us.

 

This is a powerful and emotional story, which School Library Journal called “Thoroughly enjoyable and unexpectedly wry,...as intelligent as it is succinct.”

Larger-Than-Life Lara
by Dandi Daley Mackall

• Publication Date: November 1, 2016
• Genres: Children's 10+, Family Life, Fiction
• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
• ISBN-10: 1496414292
• ISBN-13: 9781496414298