Third grade best friends Nixie and Grace spend every afternoon together after school at Nixie's house. Nixie's mom tells the girls she has taken a new job and she will have to attend the after school cooking camp program while Grace will be staying with another classmate, Elyse. Nixie dreads going to the cooking camp without Grace and begins to worry that she is loosing her best friend to someone else. While tying to come up with plan after plan to win her over, each one fails and Nixie ends up turning things into a big mess! She may even loose Grace's friendship forever.
This is a wonderful chapter book for elementary aged kids about friendships, feelings and everyday school life. They will find the story relatable to their own daily situations as the author does a nice job writing from a young child's perspective. Nixie is so fixated on Grace and Elyse's bonding that she ignores any opportunity of new friendships for herself with her cooking camp group. There are several new and nice classmates but she is so jealous of Grace and Elyse that she cannot enjoy the camp for all it has to offer her. She is having a difficult time with the sudden changes coming all at once which kids can struggle with at this age group. With her "Get Your Best Friend Back" plan, each one backfires on Nixie making her feel sadder and alone. Nixie even ends up saying something very mean to Grace that may end their friendship but learns the meaning of giving a sincere apology. There are illustrations throughout the chapters giving visuals of the cooking camp, Nixie's feelings and of the many diverse characters which adds nicely to the story. Included at the end is a recipe of Nixie's favorite Morning Glory Muffins that kids might be inspired to bake after reading how much fun cooking can be. This is the first in the After-School Superstars series with other characters from this story branching out having books about their own after school activity experiences. There are a total of four books so far and I hope more characters will follow. These stories can also teach younger readers about new ideas, social mistakes, consequences, empathy and problem solving. I think this is a "just right book" for ages 7-9.~
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