School of Charm

Chip has always been closer to her father than her beauty-queen mother, so when her father dies, and her family goes to live with her hardened grandma, Chip starts to question who she is. Her older sister, Charlene, and younger sister, Rosie, are gorgeous copies of Chip’s mother and Grandma, but Chip looks like her father. Grandma decides to enter everyone but Chip into a local beauty contest, saying Chip is not good or pretty enough. Chip enters in secret, after discovering a charm school run by the mysterious and lovely Miss Vernie. Together with new friends from the charm school and Miss Vernie, Chip sets out to show her family she belongs.

I really felt Chip’s pain as her family left her out of everything. I liked the setting in 1977; it added a fun dimension to the book. Chip developed a beautiful character over the course of the book. The best part, though, was the lesson that the only beauty that matters comes from inside, and everyone has something good about them.