Presenting... Tallulah

Tallulah is totally the poor little rich girl: she’s always dressed like “a fancy, gift-wrapped box,” brings smoked salmon sushi rolls to school, and can’t ever get dirty or talk loudly. “You’re not like all the other kids,” says her skinny, jewel-dripping, expensively shoed mother, who, like Tallulah’s father, is generally only seen from the waist up or is otherwise obscured in Newton’s (Let Freedom Ring) illustrations, which have an overall jittery energy to them. So Tallulah feuds with her mother, writes New York Times tell-all bestsellers, has plastic surgery, gets her own reality show, and... wait, wrong story. In this story, Tallulah makes friend with a poor little rich boy, rescues a puppy that her classmates want to let drown (huh?), and finally persuades her parents that the real Tallulah likes to “wear jeans and build clay mountains and rescue dogs, even if they’re funny looking.” Seldom has the disclaimer, “any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental,” seemed so dubious. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)