cover image SEEING SUGAR

SEEING SUGAR

Cynthia L. Brinson, . . Viking, $15.99 (84pp) ISBN 978-0-670-03646-2

Kate, the protagonist of this debut book, adores fourth grade—until the day the teacher asks her to give up her front-row seat for Sugar Rose, the new girl from Georgia who has long, silky hair and a nose like Barbie's. In her new desk in the back row, Kate feels as though she's been exiled to another state ("If Georgia was way up there at the front, then she must be in Alaska,"she thinks), and her bitterness intensifies when she discovers that she can't see the blackboard. After Kate reluctantly visits an optometrist and gets glasses, the narrative takes a turn from the snappy to the sappy. Delighted with the clarity of her improved vision, Kate grabs her mother's Polaroid camera and begins capturing on film crisp images that had previously been blurry. Kate is now "nuts about photography, just like she used to be nuts about school," which leads to the facile realization that "things looked different now. Maybe it wasn't the new girl's fault that Kate hated school. Maybe it was her own choice." At school, the newly converted shutterbug examines a class photo she has just taken and sees in Sugar Rose "a small shy girl in a sweater that was much too big" and understands "how alone and frightened" her classmate actually is. There's a worthwhile message here about how resentment can cloud judgment, but its delivery is forced. Ages 8-12. (June)