MAKEOVERS BY MARCIA

Yikes! What could be worse than gaining five pounds and having two prominent pimples on your face the day before starting 8th grade? Maybe having your social studies teacher assign you to community service in the local nursing home, with the idea of applying your mom’s Jay-Dub’s cosmetic makeovers to frail, 90-year-old women. Teen girls will sigh empathetically with pretty, popular Marcia in this fifth and final story about the West Creek Middle School kids. In her desperation to get cute Alex to invite her to the October dance, she goes on the grapefruit diet and her matchmaking talent works great for her best friend and the elder, wheelchair-bound Mavis, but not herself. Terrific title with spot-on dialogue, characters, humor and a realistic premise that bridges age preconceptions. Especially funny is the episode of trying pine nuts as an aphrodisiac. Though it can be read independently, fans of the first four will giggle, groan and gush as they relate to Marcia’s angst. As unblemished as a good makeover. (Fiction. 8-12)