Beauty McElwrath, a sixth grader, has always been a bit of a loner at school. For some reason, she has always struggled to make friends. In fact, until this past summer, her only friend was a boy named Cody. He was sort of scared off by the fact that she has started to develop breasts, and he started to feel more for her than friendship. To make matters worse, her mother is dating her new teacher.

As the school year begins, the students learn that they will be joined by a new student, a girl named Alane. Alane suffers from progeria, a genetic disorder that makes the individual age an extremely excelerated rate. In fact, Alane looks like an old lady, wears a wig, has poor eyesight, and suffers from arthritis. As you can guess, most of the kids at school want nothing to do with her ... and they even talk a little bad.

Beauty wants to befriend the new girl, but she knows that this is also an opportunity to become part of the in crowd. Making friends with Alane will seal her fate on the outside. At the same time, the family strongly believes in the idea that "Pretty is as pretty diz," which means that it doesn't matter how pretty you are on the outside. If you are ugly on the inside, it trumps it all.

Unfortunately, Beauty initially decides to treat the new girl the "freakoid" she has always been viewed as. Fortunately, it doesn't take her long to realize how much she likes Alane and see what great friends they can be.

This book is really interesting and the story definitely drew me in. Unfortunately, the hokiness and preachiness tends to predominate, making the whole thing feel like an old Afterschool Special. Things get a little out of control as the girls each end up stealing their mom's car for an innocent joyride in the middle of the evening. On the bright side, Alane and Beauty are both such great characters that make the reader really feel for them. If you liked this book, I have no doubt that you would like Firegirl by Tony Abbott which presents a similar story from the perspective of a boy who has a girl with horrible burns join his class. It is a little bit less preachy.