Off-Color

Cameron has problems getting to school on time and passing her classes, but she loves the fun friends from her Brooklyn neighborhood, and she and her single mom get along fairly well except for “hassles over certain things like clothes and chores and hair.” Her life changes dramatically when her mother loses her job at a nail salon and they are forced to move into the projects. Soon after, Cameron discovers that the father she has never known is black (though careful readers may guess the secret long before it is revealed). McDonald (Harlem Hustle ) weaves in a variety of sources, from Othello to modern celebrities like Mariah Carey, as Cameron launches into a series of unusually believable discussions about race with her classmates, teachers, and both school and project friends (a white friend asks, “Anyway, real black people aren’t gonna think you’re black, so why try to be something you’re not?”); these frank conversations will surely get readers thinking as well. Text messages and “ghetto fabulous” dialogue inject lots of motion, even if the plot meanders some (the book is more than half over before Cameron finds photos of her father holding her as a baby). Readers will be impressed with Cameron’s growing strength, and they’ll be swept up in the exuberant writing. Ages 12-up. (Nov.)