The Paris Project

Cleveland Rosebud Potts wants to leave her insipid town of Sassafras, Florida for the bright lights of Paris, France. She's just in seventh grade but she knows what she wants and what she doesn't want. And what she doesn't want is to stay in a small town where she is shunned and shamed because her father stole from his employer and was put in jail, where her mother has to work extra to pay for the costs of getting a lawyer, where her older sister works hard to put back money into a college fund to try to go to her dream college next year, where her friend is bullied for being gay. Cleveland has put together a list of things to do to enable her to go to the American School in Paris, and she's already started working on these things. She knows if she can just accomplish them she will get out of this place.

I don't see that many stories about working-class people for children, and this is one of the best I've read. Cleveland's dad is in jail, and that is an experience a lot of children have. The book explores the feelings of children who have a parent in jail and the situation is resolved in a realistic and hopeful way. The hard work of the family is rewarded and the love the family members have for each other is apparent.