The Gift of the Pirate Queen by Patricia Reilly Giff

An entertaining read. It kept me interested all the way to the end, maybe because I remember how I felt when I was 11 and my grandmother came to help my mother with me and the house after my father died. This girl was nicer and so was Fiona the cousin who came to help. It also dealt with the gift of courage to deal with mistakes, lies, frustrations, and other people's opinions. Expectations of ourselves and others frequently cause kids problems, and not only kids I guess. This was a little better than the Polk Street Kids because the sentence construction was not as choppy and you could follow what was going on better. Potential for my higher third graders. Not really a read-aloud.