The Trouble with Rules

Sometimes, breaking the rules is the best thing you can do, especially when the rules don't allow you to be yourself.

For Nadine Rostraver, fourth grade comes with peer pressure and new social rules. For one thing, girls aren't supposed to hang out with boys anymore. So where does that leave Nadine and her best friend Nick?

Then Summer Crawford arrives at their school and Nadine's life goes from bad to worse! Nadine loses her job on the class newspaper and gets in serious trouble with her teacher. But Summer has always been a free spirit, and together Nadine, Nick, and Summer realize that life is a lot more fun if you march to the beat of your own drum.

Leslie Bulion's sensitive, realistic look at adolescence will resonate with young readers who will recognize themselves and their own dilemmas in her well-drawn characters and their responses to a complicated world."Readers will empathize with the protagonist and may see themselves in her"—School Library Journal

"Readers will empathize with Nadie's thought-provoking predicaments and her personal responses as she struggles through the transition from lower to upper elementary school."—Kirkus ReviewsLeslie Bulion has graduate degrees in oceanography and social work. She has written parenting and education articles and is the author of several children's science-related poetry books and novels. When she's not writing, she enjoys exploring nature with her binoculars, hand lens, and camera; collecting specimens to examine under her microscope; or going SCUBA diving and or kayaking. Leslie lives in Connecticut.