Eleven-year-old Calli Gold is the quiet third child in a family of loud overachievers. In fact, the family motto is Be Gold. Calli's sister is on an ice-skating team, and her brother's a basketball star. Her parents are sure she has a hidden gift for something. They just have to figure out what it is! But Calli has flopped at everything she's tried. She sure doesn't feel like a Gold. Until a new person enters her life. Second grader Noah Zullo might seem strange to some people, but Calli can't help liking him, and they become partners in their school's Peer Helper Program. When they create a booth for the Friendship Fair, they fill it with secrets and surprises. And as Calli and Noah work and learn together, they even surprise themselves. Michele Weber Hurwitz's debut is an endearing and gently humorous story about the true meaning of achievement and the important things an "ordinary" kid has to offer. Nominated for: Maud Hart Lovelace Award (Minnesota) Bluestem Readers’ Choice Award (Illinois) MICHELE WEBER HURWITZ grew up in a suburb of Chicago and still lives in the same area with her husband and three children. She does not have a huge calendar taped to her kitchen wall but has been known, on occasion, to drive with Post-it notes stuck to the steering wheel. This is her first novel. Visit her at micheleweberhurwitz.com. 1 C'mon, Calli, Chop-chop The way I look at it, you can divide all the people in the world into two categories: the loud ones who shout about who they are and what they do, and the quiet ones who just are and do. I suppose one kind balances out the other kind, like black letters on white paper, or frozen teeth from a Popsicle on a ninety-five-degree summer day. Except for this: if you're a quiet person randomly and hopelessly born into a family of louds, then it isn't a balance at all. It's downright lopsided. Unfortunately, that would be me. Calli Gold, number three kid in the Gold family. One quiet. Four louds. Lopsided. Not to mention exasperating. I am sitting at the kitchen table, sucking the salt from a sourdough pretzel nugget while my mom arranges pink and blue Post-it notes on the Calendar. Most of the salt is gone and the pretzel has turned to mush when I hear two bangs, several bumps, and one loud crash. My sister, Becca, has tumbled down the stairs. I'm not surprised, and neither is Mom, because Becca trips on the stairs all the time. It's never anything serious, because she somehow grabs hold of the banister at the last second. I can't see her or the stairs from the kitchen, but I hear her groan and moan. "You all right, Becca?" Mom calls out, still intently examining the dizzying pattern of pink and blue Post-its. She tugs at the back edge of her sweater, straightening the places where it's gotten bunched up. I can picture Becca, sprawled at the bottom of the carpeted staircase, the stuff from her skating bag in a messy pile around her on the wood floor. Skates and towels and tights, and her sweatshirt proclaiming to the world that ice girls are sizzlin' hot. And in the middle of it, with her lips pulled into a snarl, is my thirteen-year-old sister, mad at everyone who dares to look her way. If Becca would ever listen to me (and she won't, because I'm only eleven), there are three things I would tell her: (1) Zip up the skating bag. Then everything won't fall out. (2) Socks can be awful slippery on carpeted stairs. And (3) It's probably not smart to look out the window by our front door to see if the cute boy across the street is shooting baskets in his driveway and walk down the stairs at the same time. "Becca?" Mom calls again. "I'm fine," she snaps. Mom taps a pen on the enormous monthly write-on, wipe-off calendar taped to our kitchen wall. Better known as the Calendar. "It's going to be tight today," she says, peeling off one blue Post-it note and then a pink one. Pink are Becca's Post-its, and my brother Alex's are blue. These tiny squares contain their activity schedules down to the minute. My mother, who calls herself the Gold CFO (Chief Family Organizer), says that without her planning, our life as we know it would fall apart. Mom used to be a project manager for a big food company, but for the time being, she says we are her projects. She says that managing this family is more work than her job ever was. Light yellow is the color of my Post-its. There are only two of them on the Calendar for this month. One is for a dentist appointment and the other is for a haircut. My dad says he'd like to see lots more yellow Post-its filling up the Calendar, because the Golds are busy people, and after all, I am a Gold too. Trouble is, in the past two years, I tried gymnastics, ballet, soccer, baton twirling, violin, and even origami, but I was a big disappointment in everything. Or everything was a big disappointment to me. I can't remember which. So as of right now, I haven't yet made my mark on the Calendar. But Dad says I will. He says I have to, beca