Amazon.com (ISBN 0440400090, Paperback)

"As soon as I finish this chocolate pudding, I'm going to jump out the window." Twelve-year-old Anastasia Krupnik has just discovered that her parents are planning a move to the suburbs. And she happens to know that people in the suburbs do not have meaningful paintings on their walls. They have paint-by-numbers pictures of kittens with big eyes playing with balls of yarn. And in the place of bookcases they have giant TV sets with bowls of fake fruit on top. One look at their future house in the suburbs, however, and Anastasia falls in love. It's not long before she's meeting the neighbors, including a handsome tennis player and a witch named Gertrude Stein. And it takes hardly any time at all before she's immersed in just the kind of complicated messes that she seems to specialize in.

Award-winning author Lois Lowry has an undeniable knack for knowing the minds of young people, from Anastasia's 2-year-old brother in All About Sam to the 10-year-old Anastasia Krupnik to the precocious preteen character in this engaging novel. Don't miss the rest of Lowry's Anastasia series--as wildly funny, touching, and loaded with personality as Anastasia herself. (Ages 8 to 12) --Emilie Coulter