Her only hope is a secret pact that she made with her father: If she can stick it out in Connecticut for one year, he’ll bring her back home.Īt first, surviving the year feels impossible. It’s noisy, and crowded, and there’s no real nature. She doesn’t mind not having electricity or running water-instead, she’s got tall trees, fresh streams, and endless sky.īut then her parents divorce, and Rigel and her sisters have to move with their mom to the Connecticut suburbs to live with a grandmother they’ve never met. She hunts rabbits, takes correspondence classes through the mail, and plays dominoes with her family in their two-room cabin. Related: 8 Books Like More to the Story by Hena KhanĮleven-year-old Rigel Harman loves her life in off-the-grid Alaska. And as her hunger for fame looks like it might cost her a blossoming friendship, Jameela questions what matters most, and whether she’s cut out to be a journalist at all… But when her younger sister gets seriously ill, Jameela’s world turns upside down. Missing him makes Jameela determined to write an epic article-one to make her dad extra proud. Jameela, along with her three sisters, is devastated when their father needs to take a job overseas, away from their cozy Georgia home for six months. Jameela’s assigned to write about the new boy in school, who has a cool British accent but doesn’t share much, and wonders how she’ll make his story gripping enough to enter into a national media contest. The problem is her editor-in-chief keeps shooting down her article ideas. When Jameela Mirza is picked to be feature editor of her middle school newspaper, she’s one step closer to being an award-winning journalist like her late grandfather. But when things go awry a week before opening night, will Nat be able to cast her fears and insecurities aside and “Defy Gravity” in every sense of the song title? Would someone like Nat ever get cast?īut when Nat’s family moves from California to New Jersey, Nat stumbles upon auditions for a kids’ production of Wicked, one of her favorite musicals ever! And she gets into the ensemble! The other cast members are super cool and inclusive (well, most of them)- especially Malik, the male lead and cutest boy Nat’s ever seen. She’s never actually been in a musical though, or even seen an actor who uses a wheelchair for mobility on stage.

But there’s one thing she’s absolutely OBSESSED with: MUSICALS! From Hamilton to Les Mis, there’s not a cast album she hasn’t memorized and belted along to. Thirteen-year-old Nat Beacon loves a lot of things: her dog Warbucks, her best friend Chloe, and competing on her wheelchair racing team, the Zoomers, to name a few.

Stand up yumi chung