About the Author:
Charise Mericle Harper is the author and illustrator of many books for children, including the Just Grace series and the Next Best Junior Chef series. Charise lives in Oregon. Visit Charise at chariseharper.com and on Twitter at @ChariseHarper.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
My real name is Grace, and if that was your real name then you would think that if someone wanted your attention they would shout Grace!” but that is not what happens for me. I am not a usual person, but you can’t tell that by just looking at me, because most of my unusualness is pretty much on the inside. My outside wrapping looks like any other girl’s, except I don’t wear very much pink because that is definitely not one of my favorite colors. Having four girls named Grace in the same class, and not letting any of them use the name Grace. Instead, calling them Grace W., Gracie, Grace F. (secretly named the Big Meanie by me, because that is what she is), and Just Grace. The Just Grace name probably being the most dumb name in the whole world ever, which is especially bad and sad because that’s the one that is mine.
Thinking that someone is 100 percent disgusting and not likable, and then having something happen that changes your mind a little bit so that the gross disgusting feeling is almost all gone, even when you have to stand right next to him and say, Hi, Sammy.” Having a little superpower that almost no one knows about. Empathy power is the power to feel someone else’s sadness, and then to try to make that sadness go away. It’s not an easy power to have. I know, because I have it.
It still tasted good, though!
Girls who draw comics, because mostly that’s a boy thing, though it just doesn’t make any sense why it would be that way. Butterfly Lady can make you feel better just by wrapping you in her big beautiful wings.
Living next door to your most perfect friend in the whole world. And having that friend be someone as great as Mimi.
Having a cool French flight attendant named Augustine Dupre living right in your very own basement. But living in a great apartment that your dad made, not in the scary-spider part next to the furnace.
Hopefully they will never meet!
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