THE TOTAL TRAGEDY OF A GIRL NAMED HAMLET

Eighth grader Hamlet (named by her Shakespeare-crazed, professorial parents) has even more than a ghastly name to deal with in the complicated script of her life. Her seven-year-old sister, Desdemona, a genial genius, is starting classes at Hamlet’s school, and she’s expected to somehow ease the tyke into middle-school society. In the face of her sister’s brilliance, Hamlet has always been able to fly under her parents’ radar. But now, her newly discovered talent for performing Shakespeare (in a classroom A Midsummer Night’s Dream exercise), to the astonishment of her teacher and classmates, has drawn unwanted attention. Even more tragically, her best (guy) friend seems to have developed a romantic interest in her, and she’s failing math and needs tutoring from…her little sister. (“Such an injury would vex a saint!” as the Bard would have it.) What’s a determinedly average girl to do? Hamlet believably grows to fit the new challenges in her life, and her frustrations, presented in a good-humored, first-person narrative, are entertainingly contained within the three Shakespearean(ish) acts of this amusing tale, which captures some of the pitfalls of middle school. (Fiction. 10-14)