The Alexandra Ingredient Book

Alexandra Plummer can't do anything right. She's always losing softball games for her team, misplacing her glasses—once she even set dinner on fire.

But when Alexandra's beloved adopted grandfather falls ill in The Alexandra Ingredient, Alexandra comes to his rescue, and her special brand of caring teaches her family some new things about responsibility and love.

Author Bio: Award-winning author Linda Leopold Strauss has published four children's books, as well as stories in magazines such as Cricket, Spider and Ladybug. Ms. Strauss lives in Ohio.

Publishers Weekly

Alexandra, 10, is always in troubleshe gets lost in the pages of Little Women while the house fills with smoke from a kitchen fire, forgets to study for tests, loses her homework and misplaces her glasses. But her best friend Bethie and an old man named Mike, part of an Adopt-a-Grandparent program, know that Alexandra is special in her own way, and the three of them work together to help her become more responsible. When Alexandra gets caught hiding a new kitten in the basement and Mike goes into the hospital, it seems as if her problems are insurmountable. But for once it is Alexandra's act-first, think-later attitude that not only helps Mike but also changes her mother's mind about the kitten. A first novel, this is a competently written story about a typicaland funnygirl who gets into somewhat unusual scrapes. Ages 8-12. (Oct.)