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)

Primary Concern: as if being 12 3/4 isn't bad enough, my mother is running for president! by Donna Gephart

REASONS MOM SHOULD NOT RUN FOR PRESIDENT:

1. I need her more than the rest of the country.

2. Mom will have to shake hands with a million people and might catch a horrible disease, like what happened to the president on that show 24.

3. As if enough photographers don't already snap my picture when I look my absolute worst. Can't Mom wait to do this until I'm out of my awkward stage, you know, like when I'm thirty?

4. And the most important reason Mom shouldn't run for president is I don't want anything to happen to her.

Vanessa Rothrock is a typical almost-teenager; she can't get by without her BFF Emma, she's always tripping over her own big feet, her hair gets the frizzies, she prays nightly for the Boob Fairy to visit, and she can't help crushing on the Reginald Trumball, the cutest boy in her class.

Besides that, no problems. Except that she's studying for the regional spelling bee and can't turn off her internal speller every time she hears a big word. And, oh, yeah, her mom is off somewhere running for President of the United States.

If Vanessa thought her mom was too busy just being governor of Florida, things get so much worse while she's campaigning for Super Tuesday. Vanessa finds herself making an appointment just to talk to her. And when she finally tells her mother about the death threats showing up in her locker, she finds herself with Secret Service details sitting in her classrooms and guarding her locker. The good news is that no more scary notes show up there. The bad news is that she stops getting those sweet notes from her mystery admirer too.

As the July nominating convention draws closer and the source of the death threats is not tracked down, Vanessa feels she must save her mom's life by preventing her nomination, but she's just not sure she has the nerve to do what she has to do.

Despite the real suspense, As If Being 12 3/4 Isn't Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running for President! is basically a very funny story of an awkward, self-conscious seventh grader forced by circumstance to step into the too-bright light of notoriety at exactly the wrong moment in her life. But by the time she's 13 1/4, Vanessa finds that she has plenty of what it takes--if not grace in motion--to spare.