Middle graders will laugh and cry with thirteenyearold Vanessa Martin as she tries to be like Vanessa Williams the first black Miss America. In this semiautobiographical debut novel set in 1983 Vanessa Martins reallife reality of living with family in public housing in Newark New Jersey is a far cry from the glamorous Miss America stage. She struggles with a mother she barely remembers a grandfather dealing with addiction and her own battle with selfconfidence. But when a new teacher at sch