"A piano is glamorous. Sophisticated. Worldly. It is a wonderful thing to play the piano. . . . I play the organ. A wood-grained, vinyl-seated, wheeze-bag organ. The Perfectone D-60." Zoe, eleven, wants to become a musical prodigy, but her distractible father brings home the wrong instrument. Then her best friend dumps her for someone cooler. And a weird boy starts following her home. As Zoe suffers through lessons in playing "Hits of the Seventies," she wonders whether anything in her life will ever be right. Until then, there's always the cha-cha setting.
A wide variety of novels and accessible nonfiction for younger elementary readers who love a good story comprise this category of 12 books per year. The focus in these titles is primarily on the text, though some novels may feature illustration.