The second in a funny illustrated middle grade series about a Panamanian American girl who hatches a plot to get rich quick—as long as her sister doesn’t in the way—from NYT bestselling author Veronica Chambers. Exuberant and larger-than-life Flora Violeta LeFevre has a plan—a plan to become a millionaire in the new year. She’s already collecting her birthday money and her mom’s swear jar so when the school announces a kids’ entrepreneurship conference, Flora’s excited to learn all the tricks to becoming rich. But she can’t open an animal hospital without a medical degree . . . and she can’t think of anything to invent and her sister keeps stealing the spotlight from her. As Flora brainstorms the perfect business, a hot idea during a cold day is just the thing she needs to make her dreams come true. “[E]ndearing and relatable…A slice-of-life story that’s rich in heart.” —Kirkus Veronica Chambers is the editor for Narrative Projects at The New York Times . She is a prolific author, best known for the New York Times bestseller Finish the Fight! , as well as the critically acclaimed memoir Mama's Girl and picture book biographies Shirley Chisholm Is a Verb and Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa. Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, she writes often about her Afro-Latina heritage. She speaks, reads, and writes Spanish, but she is truly fluent in Spanglish. Sujean Rim is the author and illustrator of the beloved Birdie series, Zoogie Boogie Fever! , Chee-Kee: A Panda in Bearland , and more. She has worked as an illustrator for clients including Tiffany & Co., Target, and the website DailyCandy. Sujean lives in New York with her favorite artist and husband Bob, and their son, Charlie. Chapter 1 New Year’s Every year, for as long as Flora Violeta LeFevre could remember, she had celebrated New Year’s with her best friend, Clara. Flora sometimes thought that the term best friend was hardly good enough to describe how she felt about Clara. Every character on TV and in books had a “best friend.” But Clara was more than that. She was la chica más divertida that Flora had ever known. Clara made every day into an adventure. Clara was the best actress and could make you laugh just by making a silly expression with her face or pantomiming something loco, like pretending the jungle gym in the park was a 100-foot-high tree in the Amazon and that she was going to set a world record for bungee jumping as soon as she vaulted off. Clara always said it didn’t matter if they weren’t so good at skateboarding or they weren’t the best artists. “Do you think Basquiat or Picasso gave a rip what their art teachers thought of them?” Clara would say, holding up a painting that Flora had done of her abuela. Flora had glued strips of fabric to the canvas so that her grandmother’s dress would look like a traditional mola. “Escúchame, Flora la Fresca. This could be the future of modern art. We don’t know. We don’t live in the future . We just have to continue to be awesome and someday we’ll find out.” Clara had nicknames for everybody and she was the one who first called her Flora la Fresca. “You speak your mind,” Clara said. “I like that. Being fresca isn’t being rude. It’s being smart.” Soon everyone in Flora’s family, including her parents, her uncles, and her grandmother, called her Flora la Fresca too. Flora’s family was from Panama and Clara’s parents were from Argentina. They both lived in Westerly, which was a little town by the sea in Rhode Island. Panama and Argentina were different in many ways. For example, Panama was in Central America, and Argentina was in South America. In July, when it was summer in Panama, it was winter in Argentina. But the LeFevres and Clara’s family were both Latino, and in Westerly, that meant they had more in common than not. Both families insisted that their daughters go to Saturday Spanish school para mejorar la gramática. And on New Year’s Eve, both families celebrated with a big party at Clara’s house. More than a hundred people would crowd the kitchen and the living room, spilling out into the yard and lounging around the solarium and the heated pool. Clara’s dad designed pools for a living, and Rhode Island was cold come the fall. So they had an indoor pool. Clara’s dad, whom Flora called Tío Joaquín, said the room with the indoor pool was a solarium because it had glass all around and solar panels that turned the sunlight into heat, even on a brrr winter’s day. Then Clara had moved away, right after the New Year’s party in the January of fifth grade, leaving Flora to fend for herself against the loneliness of losing her most favorite friend ever and the curse of a big sister who thought turning fifteen and having a quinceañera made her reina of the world. Clara had moved to California, which was just about as far away from Westerly, Rhode Island, as one could get. Clara’s mom, or Tía Mariana, as Flora called her, was a cartographer, which was a spiffy word for someone who makes map