Twelve-year-old Emma-Jean Lazarus isnt like the other seventh-graders at William Gladstone Middle School She is brilliant and logical and curious about the world Shes also strange Extremely strange in the best sense of the word The other seventh-graders dont understand Emma-Jean But thats okay since Emma-Jean doesnt understand them either Their behavior is so illogical And thus their lives are extremely messy Emma-Jean dislikes disorder of any kind and has always considered it prudent to keep her distance from her peers to observe from afar Until one day when she walks into the girls room at school and finds Colleen Pomerantz sobbing at the sink Colleen is nothing like Emma-Jean Shes one of those girls who cares about everything and everyone--sometimes its too much Shes always wondering if someone is mad at her or if she has egg salad stuck in her braces or if her new sneakers make her look like a complete dork Mainly Colleen wonders why people just cant ask nicer And now Colleen is sure that the meanest girl in school is trying to steal her best friend What happens when these two girls meet What happens when Emma-Jean tries to solve Colleens problem using the awesome powers of logic she learned from her mathematician father and his hero the legendary French logician Jules Henri Poincare Emma-Jeans life gets messy thats for sure Everything comes crashing down including Emma-Jean herself But maybe in the end its all worth it.
