Winnie is sometimes too articulate for a sixth-grader, but girls will welcome the information in her funny, sometimes touching daily drama as she starts junior high in Atlanta and deals with family, friends, and enemies, as well as the puberty rites of buying her first bra and getting her period. Then there is the embarrassment of losing the tampon in the pool, but she gets over it. At school she is hurt by her best friend's rejection, and she is...

Eight-year-old Winnie is determined to become a horse gentler like her mother, both to prove herself to Austin, a big-talking classmate who owns a thoroughbred, and to save the ranch.