Confetti Girl by Diana Lopez

What a colorful cover!  The book begins with instructions for making cascarones, which are “festive, hollow eggshells, filled with confetti, that are cracked on people’s heads, scattering confetti all over the place and bringing everyone good luck!”  Each chapter begins with a dicho, or Spanish proverb, and the book is full of small bits of Spanish culture, which I really enjoyed.  Apolonia, or Lina, is a middle schooler in Texas, trying to get on with her life after the unexpected death of her mother the year before.  Her father, a high school English teacher, has retreated behind his love of books and words, and Lina feels as if that’s all he cares about.  The writing is sometimes stilted, and the reader is a little too outside the main character to be able to believe it when Lina stops doing her homework for English class, and blatantly makes up the answers on all of her quizzes, even though she knows that failing English will keep her from being able to play the sports that she loves.  She has constant squabbles with her best friend Vanessa, who has started to use Lina to cover up her relationship with her boyfriend (Vanessa’s mother doesn’t allow her to hang out with boys), and again, it’s kind of hard to “feel her pain.”  That said, it’s a fun book to read –the story is pretty good, and the characters are interesting.  Review by Stacy Church