Spunky and headstrong, Cameron blasts music, challenges adults, and cuts class when she feels like it. She lives with her single mom in Brooklyn and hangs out with best friends Amanda, P, and Crystal. Life in their working-class neighborhood is pretty cool until Cameron s mother suddenly loses her job and can no longer afford the rent. Move to public housing? YG2BK! But no one s kidding, and Cameron finds herself living in the projects. Can a white girl from across town hope to be accepted by the black girls in the projects? A revelation from the past forces Cameron to confront a startling truth that just might put things in perspective . . . that is, if Cameron can handle it. nbsp; Hilarious, surprising, and defiantly candid,Off-Coloris a thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining new novel from Janet McDonald. Hip and wise, the author grabs the readers and doesn t let go. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Cameron has problems getting to school on time and passing her classes, but she loves the fun friends from her Brooklyn neighborhood, and she and her single mom get along fairly well except for "hassles over certain things like clothes and chores and hair." Her life changes dramatically when her mother loses her job at a nail salon and they are forced to move into the projects. Soon after, Cameron discovers that the father she has never known is black (though careful readers may guess the secret long before it is revealed). McDonald (Harlem Hustle) weaves in a variety of sources, from Othello to modern celebrities like Mariah Carey, as Cameron launches into a series of unusually believable discussions about race with her classmates, teachers, and both school and project friends (a white friend asks, "Anyway, real black people aren't gonna think you're black, so why try to be something you're not?"); these frank conversations will surely get readers thinking as well. Text messages and "ghetto fabulous" dialogue inject lots of motion, even if the plot meanders some (the book is more than half over before Cameron finds photos of her father holding her as a baby). Readers will be impressed with Cameron's growing strength, and they'll be swept up in the exuberant writing. Ages 12-up. (Nov.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr 6 Up-Cameron Storm, 15, lives in a white working-class neighborhood until her single mother, a manicurist, loses her job at a Brighton Beach nail salon, which forces a move to an all-minority project on the other side of Brooklyn. Then Cameron finds out that her absentee father is African American. The dialogue between Cameron and her girlfriends seems totally unrealistic, and her conversations with her mother are often just as wooden and cloying. The African Americans in Cameron's new building are folksy caricatures: the wizened sassy widow, the gaggle of tough but happy project girlz. Her African-American "multicultures" teacher and biracial guidance counselor ferry her through her struggles as if on cue. More than half of this slow, slim novel takes place before Cameron and her mother move to the projects, and the time spent in the build-up is wasted constructing characters that never achieve depth. The action picks up only marginally after Cameron's discovery, as the narrative centers on pat and pretty pedestrian discussions of racial identity. The Brooklyn setting is well drawn, especially the contrasts between white and black neighborhoods. McDonald's promising and provocative subject is lost in perfunctory social examination.-Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

*Starred Review* Published after writer McDonald's death in April, this novel celebrates diversity. At first Cameron, 15, despairs of leaving her mainly white Brooklyn neighborhood when her single-parent mom gets a job in a nail salon in the projects: It's like being on another planet. Then Cameron discovers that although she looks like her loving white mom, her dad, who disappeared before she was born, is black. Why did her mother never speak about it? Is a secret the same as a lie? The messages, which include classroom discussions of Othello and Malcolm X, are never heavy, and the adult teachers, counselors, and neighbors are as spirited as Cameron and her friends, who text each other on their cell phones and go window shopping and boy watching in the mall. All the brand names and pop culture may date, but as always, McDonald dramatizes the big issues from the inside, showing the hard times and the joy in fast-talking dialogue that is honest, insulting, angry, tender, and very funny. In fact, the story is the message: Folks of every hue, color, and complexion having a great time. The last page includes a line of autobiography: Cameron sees a play about a black girl who moved from the projects to Paris and became a famous writer, just as McDonald did.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2007 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.