Times Squared

Gr 3—6—The biggest difference between twins Payton and Emma is that Payton acts and Emma is a math whiz. Even the boys they like seem identical until near the end. The middle schoolers go on a field trip to New York: Payton to see an off-Broadway show and Emma for a math competition. Although they promise never to trade places, it's not long before Payton gives her chaperone, a mathlete stage mother, the slip to see her boyfriend. Other kids are also ciphers except for Payton's biggest enemy, Ashlynn, a thoroughly unlikable girl who made Payton her slave during camp the previous summer in exchange for her fashionable clothes. She's one of the actors in the play the students came to see and she uses an improvisational scene to humiliate Payton during a rehearsal, and the rest of the children unite to make her next nasty plan fail. Playing one's twin is not a new concept. Neither is an overabundance of exclamation marks. Times Squared doesn't pretend to be anything more than fluff, but reluctant readers may like its breezy and undemanding attitude.—Tina Zubak, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA