All That Glitters....: Glitter Girls and the Great Fake-Out by Meg Cabot

RULE #3: It's okay to lie if no one finds out you're lying, and the lie doesn't hurt anyone, and it isn't that big of a lie, and it's partially based on something true, sort of.

(And, Allie Finkle might add, if your little brother Kevin doesn't hear the real story and doesn't rat on you.)

Allie is back, still working on figuring out the rules for girls, as she finds herself on the horns of a dilemma.

First, she's promised all her new friends at Pine Heights Elementary that she'd go with them to the Little Miss Majorette Baton Twirling Twirltacular, even if she had to miss her ballet lesson on Saturday. And then Allie's mom throws her a curve when she gets home. Mom has promised the mother of her worst enemy, Brittany Hauser from her old school, that she would go to her birthday party without even asking her! Allie is incensed until she discovers that the birthday party includes a limo ride to the city, afternoon makeovers and glamor photos at Glitterati, dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, and a sleepover at the posh Hilton, the one with the glass elevators!

It's too good an offer to turn down, even if Brittany is the stuck-up former friend who got all the girls at Walnut Knoll School to call her Allie Stinkle. But this offer is too good to pass up, Allie decides to go to the party. All she has to do is come up with the right "sort of" true lie to keep from hurting her new friends' feelings when she bows out of the Twirltacular trip. After all, her mom did tell Mrs. Hauser that she, Allie, would love to attend, and Brittany's dad's business is a major advertiser on Allie's mom's television show, "Good News." Allie is just being a loyal daughter to help save her mom's job, right?

Allie knows she can rely on her noted abilities as an actress to put this story over on Sophie, Erica, and Carolyn--just so their feelings won't be hurt that she ditched them for a glamorous event in the city, of course. There is just one problem--her snoopy six-year-old brother knows that Allie is just going for the limo ride and the glittery makeover, and Kevin has been known to blab secrets at all the wrong times--and to all the wrong people!

Best-selling (for The Princess Diaries) junior chick lit maven Meg Cabot has her authorly hands full extracting her heroine Allie Finkle from the tangled web she weaves in her fifth adventure, Allie Finkle's Rules For Girls #5: Glitter Girls and the Great Fake Out (Scholastic, 2010). Allie, who navigates Girl World by means of the Rules for Girls she constructs on the fly, finds herself in an uncomfortable situation as Cabot encourages a close look at the meaning of truth and personal loyalty in her serio-comic look at middle elementary school friendships. Fans of the series will not want to miss this one for summer reading fun, but author Cabot, who obviously gets the vicissitudes of friendship and of dealing with the occasional frenemy, gives readers a chance to think about their own rules for girls here.

And when Allie figures out where she went wrong, she comes up with a new rule:

"It's all good practice for later, when it really counts."