Operation Pucker Up

July 1, 2015
Grades 5-8 Seventh-grader Grace Shaw is the happiest girl at Sloane Middle School when she is cast as Snow White in the school's play. Her excitement is immediately dampened when she arrives home to find her father sitting at the dinner table, returned after a nine-month separation from her mother. To make matters worse, she realizes during the first play rehearsal that she has to kiss Prince Charming. Her first kiss ever and with one of the cutest boys in school, no less! Grace's best friend devises Operation Pucker Up, a notebook full of strategies to ensure Grace has some practice kisses under her belt before the show. A budding romance with a neighbor adds to Grace's anxiety. Short chapters and fast pacing will keep the story, equally silly and emotionally overwrought, moving. Tweens will surely sympathize with Grace's struggle to trust her much-loved father's return to her life, as well as her panic at having to kiss a boy for the first time in front of an audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)