Like Vanessa

Middle graders will laugh and cry with thirteen-year-old Vanessa Martin as she tries to be like Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America.

In this semi-autobiographical debut novel set in 1983, Vanessa Martin''s real-life reality of living with family in public housing in Newark, New Jersey is a far cry from the glamorous Miss America stage. She struggles with a mother she barely remembers, a grandfather dealing with addiction and her own battle with self-confidence. But when a new teacher at school coordinates a beauty pageant and convinces Vanessa to enter, Vanessa''s view of her own world begins to change. Vanessa discovers that her own self-worth is more than the scores of her talent performance and her interview answers, and that she doesn''t need a crown to be comfortable in her own skin and see her own true beauty.

This debut is a treasure: a gift to every middle school girl who ever felt unpretty, unloved, and trapped by her circumstances.— Kirkus STARRED REVIEW