Fans of "Roller Girl" will enjoy Ms. Jamieson's latest work, which also features a girl "in search of" herself. Imogene, aka "Impy" has parents who work the Florida Renaissance Festival each year (eight weekends in the fall) and Impy works to tolerate an annoying younger brother. She has been home-schooled up until now and is beginning public school as a sixth grader. Like the previous book, this one has bold artwork and the facial expressions which add to the story. The artwork helps make the characters, which could be stock from any CW TV show, more dimensional. Students will identify with the pre-teen girl drama, even if the tale was a bit too familiar for me. On the plus side, Ms. Jamieson gets ren-fest right, clearly having done her research. She touches, ever so briefly, on the challenges of racial identity these days (Impy's father is a man of color) but the references are so subtle that it is unclear if the typical reader would get them. The darker-skinned father always plays the "bad guy" at the festival, an unhappy client at the retail store where he works intimates he doesn't belong. Ms. Jamieson also doesn't shy away from the misery of life's mistakes and takes her time letting Impy dig a her own hole and suffer the consequences. It is that part, two-thirds of the way through the book, which saved it for me. On the negative side the plot was screamingly predictable and the ren-fest school allusions forced (hugely forced, Incredible Hulk forced). The ending was very neatly tied up, which, again, will make this a win for younger readers. The book is very "palatable." It isn't brilliant or memorable but it should please the audience it was designed for.
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