Campaign Trail: Vote 4 Amelia by Marissa Moss

That inveterate notebook keeper Amelia is back with another seventh-grade episode in Vote 4 Amelia.

It's election time and the school is plastered with partisan posters. Amelia's best friend, the ever-cool Carly, is running for president of the class and has persuaded her loyal buddies Amelia and Leah to join her ticket as candidates for secretary and treasurer of the class. Shy Amelia figures she'll go in on the popular Carly's coattails without much campaigning, but she enthusiastically puts her artistic skills to good use designing mega-cool posters for Carly.

But politics being politics, the campaign soon hits some bumps. The opposition candidate, the too-hunky Hudson, provides plenty of campaign swag in the form of freebie chocolate bars which practically inundate the candy-loving seventh graders. There's pork here, too,--in the form of Hudson's platform of providing candy machines on every hall in the school, courtesy of his father's candy distribution company--and dirty tricks aplenty, as Hudson, in violation of school rules, secretly takes down Carly's posters as fast as Amelia can create them. Then, on the eve of the election, Hudson fashions his own October surprise, spreading the lie that Carly turned a puppy she didn't want over to the animal shelter to be euthanized. Amelia and Leah try to explain to the aghast electorate that despite Carly's father's strong allergy to dogs, her mom had promised to take the puppy back and find an home for it if the shelter could not do so in three weeks, but, thanks to his rumor mongering, Hudson cruises to an easy win.

Luckily for Carly's ticket, there's a whistle blower within the school who reports Hudson's poster thefts to the election commission, and Amelia and Carly learn an unexpected but valuable lesson about power politics.

Amelia's hilarious "Life in Middle School" journals are continued in Amelia's 7th-Grade Notebook (Amelia)