Themes: High School, Neighborhoods, Family, Loyalty, Friendship, Urban Teen Fiction, Competition, Contest, Inspiration, Popularity, Ideas of Beauty, Fiction, Teen, Young Adult, Chapter Book, Hi-Lo, Hi-Lo Books, Hi-Lo Solutions, High-Low Books, Hi-Low Books, ELL, EL, ESL, Struggling Learner, Struggling Reader, Special Education, SPED, Newcomers, Reading, Learning, Education, Educational, Educational Books. Written for young adults, the Urban Underground...

"Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur."--

After her beloved father's death in 1977, eleven-year-old tomboy Chip tries to fit with her family of beauty queens, making unlikely new friends at Miss Vernie's unusual charm school in Mt. Airy, North Carolina.

"It is 1983 and Vanessa Martin, a thirteen-year-old African American girl in Newark's public housing, dreams of following in the footsteps of the first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams; but with a dysfunctional family (mother in jail, father withdrawn, drunken grandfather, gay cousin) the odds are against her--until a new teacher at school organizes a beauty pageant and encourages Vanessa to enter." --

After being ousted from yet another elite boarding school, seventeen-year-old Jane returns to her Alabama hometown, where her grandmother persuades her to enter the Magnolia Maid pageant.

When feisty twelve-year-old Rebel McKenzie, an aspiring paleontologist, goes to spend the summer taking care of her older sister's seven-year-old son at the mobile home park in Frog Level, Virginia, she never expects to enter a beauty pageant or meet a hand model.

"When thirteen-year-old Ellie reluctantly agrees to enter a beauty pageant with her best friend Coralee, the director seems determined to feature Ellie and her wheelchair, so she must find a way to participate on her own terms, all while saving her friendship and forming a better relationship with her divorced dad."--

"Dubbed 'Dumplin'' by her former beauty queen mom, Willowdean has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American-beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked ... until Will takes a job at Harpy's, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn't surprised to find herself attracted to Bo, but she is...

It's time for the Blueberry Festival, and everyone in town is busy getting ready. Kylie Jean Carter's momma is baking pies, her pa is picking berries, and Kylie is thinking about becoming the Blueberry Queen.

Sick of living in the shadow of her seven-year-old pageant queen sister who is praised for her looks, Lexi resolves to get a makeover when she determines her personality just isn't enough to garner the attentions of boys.