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VIOLET AND THE PIE OF LIFE

Full of humor, heart and poignancy, here is a fresh spin on the classic trope of growing up and finding out who you are -- but with a wit and warmth all its own. The story takes us into both math and theatre, enough STEAM to delight any educator -- and charts and graphs, texts and lists, all bring life to this story of friendship, family and identity.

 

Seventh-grader Violet has two great loves in her life – math (especially pi, because how fascinating is that?) and pie – especially apple-berry. She keeps the math thing secret, because that’s hardly likely to improve her middle-school popularity rating, is it? It’s not that Violet is unpopular exactly – she’s just so ordinary that most of the class hardly knows she exists. One day she’d love to become Super Violet – the girl who has smart, brave things to say in every situation,  the girl who stands tall, but how could that ever happen?

Then Violet’s dad leaves home, driven out by her mom’s nagging. At least, that’s how Violet sees it. And the next day she finds herself unexpectedly cast as the solo-singing Lion in the school production of The Wizard of Oz. With her best friend McKenzie (cast as a lowly monkey) furious with her, Violet has to step right outside her comfort zone  — while painfully coming to terms with the mystery of where her father has gone, and why.

As she gets to know the truth about annoyingly perfect Ally (whom McKenzie hates), and acts alongside her crush Diego, Violet begins to find her courage and her voice.  Somewhere along the yellow brick road, she discovers that there is usually more to people (even parents) than she’d realized  – and that maybe, Super Violet was there inside her all along.

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World English Language: Holiday House (Spring 2021)