Abigail is starting a new middle school, a Catholic school, because she?s been expelled from her old one. She?s sure that this place will be just the same as the last, and no one will listen to her here either. Even her parents don?t seem able to really hear the truth about what happened at the previous school. But now she finds herself in a community of people who do listen, who want to be her friends, and who help her discover a talent for theater that she never knew she had. Converting to Catholicism began merely as a way to annoy her parents, but quickly it becomes more. Could she be developing real faith? Kimberly Brubaker Bradley masterfully tells the tale of Abigail?s spiritual journey and the faith that comes to those who need it. Abigail has been kicked out of sixth grade for attacking the principal's son with a knife. That leaves her with only a few schooling options, and her parents pick Catholic school. Angry that no one seems interested in how bullying pushed her to the assault, Abigail thinks she'll teach her workaholic, nonreligious parents a lesson by feigning interest in Catholicism. Predictably, Abigail starts to find her religious studies intriguing, yet even she is not sure what she really believes or how much of a commitment she's ready to make to faith. This works well as a depiction of a child's one-step forward, one-step back approach to religion. But where Abigail comes across as a real kid, opening herself to new and somewhat scary ideas, her parents are strictly one-dimensional, stereotypical to the point of unbelievability in their pursuit of job status. Other supporting characters, including the school priest and Abigail's potential godmother, are more rounded, though also out of central casting. Despite the book's pat ending, this is meaty for a middle-grade novel and may lead readers to think about what they believe. Cooper, Ilene Kimberly Brubaker Bradleylives on a forty-two-acre farm inBristol, Tennessee.