Karma Bites, by Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas

Franny Flanders isn’t exactly in love with her life. Her two best friends no longer speak to each other, her trippy grandmother has comes to stay since her parents split, and her mother is in meltdown mode.

In an effort to have more fun, Franny decides to dye her naturally red hair blond. Anyone who knows anything about hair dye knows that getting red to blond should be left to the professionals, and Franny in turn is left with neon orange locks. Not exactly the look she was going for. In an act of desperation, Franny goes to her grandmother for help. Her friend Joey reasons that since Gran is old, maybe she’s wise as well and can help with the hair situation!

Well, Granny does decide to help and frankly, Franny is a little embarrassed about the production that involves beakers, tinctures, olive oil, smoke, sparks and alchemy?! Somehow it works and Franny asks her Granny what the heck happened, but she refuses and simply warns Franny that there may be some side effects

What she doesn’t mention is that the side effects are of the social suicide variety! Franny’s middle school is completely divided by cliques and there is a set of unwritten laws about who to talk to, where to eat et cetera. Franny’s side effect has her talking to kids who shouldn’t be talked to and talking back to the Queen Bees!

When she finally gets her Granny to spill about her recipe for fixing her hair, Granny introduces Franny to the Hindi Help Box…a magical box that helps fix problems with different recipes. Franny can’t believe it. There are loads of problems in her life and her middle school that need fixing! She can’t understand why Granny won’t hand over the box and let Franny go to town.

But Granny is too trusting, and soon Franny is “fixing” the relationship between her two best friends Joey and Kate. She’s “fixing” boring teachers. And she’s “fixing” her dad’s girlfriend. But what Franny hasn’t counted on is the butterfly effect…the fact that all of this messing around she is doing affects everything else in her world. Can Franny fix all of the fixing that she has done? What are the outcomes of using magic to further her own ends?

Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas have written a breezy story that reads like a television sit-com with over-the-top characters and situations. But that’s not a bad thing! The underlying message of being careful what you wish for is loud and clear, but is presented in a thoroughly entertaining way. While Franny’s middle school has more cliques than I have personally ever encountered, the archetypes wear their characters well. The one pause I was given was with the character of the Lama who comes to Franny and Granny’s aid…he is given quite the Hollywood treatment and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. But if readers take his character in the spirit with which he is given, I think that his character works for this book.Liz Burns over at A Chair A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy gets it right when she explains who this book is for.

Another fun piece of this title that needs to be mentioned are the recipes from the box that are provided ranging from the “Sensationally Sexy Smoothie” to the “Forget it Fudge”. Tweens looking for fun will eat this up!

Gifted: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

In Out of Sight, Out of Mind, readers are introduced to Queen Bee meanie Amanda Beeson. Amanda is the stereotypical you-know-what. She is obsessed with labels, clothing and tearing other kids down. She has her own little posse of wannabes, but she makes sure that her position is always in tact. She tries so hard to be who she is that she has little time for pathetic kids like Tracey Devon. She is way too skinny, her plain Jane clothes barely fit her, and she doesn’t even stand up for herself when Amanda ridicules her to her face! Amanda has no idea why Tracey is in the gifted class at school…she’s not even that smart.

What nobody knows, however, is just why Amanda is so mean. If she does allow herself to feel any empathy or sympathy for anyone, she loses herself. She actually slips into the other person for a little while, and she hates how that feels. Thus the armor.

What she doesn’t count on is feeling sorry for Tracey Devon of all people. And then waking up in her body. Amanda feels trapped. She has never totally overtaken somebody before. What is she going to do, and more importantly, how is she going to reclaim herself? This is no Freaky Friday switch…Amanda is still existing as Amanda, she’s simply also existing as Tracey.

When she gets to school in her loser body, Amanda follows Tracey’s schedule and finds that it’s pretty easy to blend in. In fact nobody even seems to see her. When she ends up in the gifted class, she is surprised by the mish mash of kids who are there. What could they possible have in common?

After a clunky start, the story gets going. The haphazard background of Amanda’s prior out of body experiences could probably be left out all together. After that is out of the way, readers will enjoy a slightly supernatural mean girl story. Once introduced to the other kids in the gifted class, readers will wonder what all of the powers are. The ominous warnings of their teacher Madame, will keep them guessing as to who will show up next to try to exploit some of the kids powers. A fun series that will hook tween girls who want something scary and romantic that isn’t too much of either of those things.