The Naked Mole-rat Letters

Frankie Wallop is normally a straight-A student, but her life begins to reel out of control when she discovers her father, a widower, has met someone while at a conference in Washington, D.C. Frankie begins to correspond with the lady through emails, trying to discourage her interest in her father by telling some outrageous lies. The lies get bigger and more out of hand as Frankie tells more and more lies to cover up the ones she has already told. As Sir Walter Scott says, "O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." It all begins to affect her grades, friendships, and family's lives until Frankie must face the consequences of her storytelling. Through her emails with her father's new friend--the rat lady (a zoo-keeper in charge of the naked mole-rats) Frankie begins to grow and the real reason she is so unhappy is slowly revealed. Written mostly in diary entries and emails, this Rebecca Caudill 2010 nominee by Mary Amato has humor and even a few vocabulary lessons along with the life lessons Frankie learns.