Review Detail

“The Metamorphosis of Bunny Baxter” by Barbara Carroll Roberts takes readers on a journey as Bunny tries to get kicked out of her new school. She can’t understand why the district had to redraw the lines for where she goes to school, and now her best friend and other close friends are going to Wade’s Run for middle school, while she’s stuck at E.D. Britt.

Even though she finds herself talking to some kids at her new school, she is immediately thrust into the spotlight when she knocks over one of the eighth grade boys on her first day of school, and then finds herself in the principal’s office when a girl who was bothering her turns the tables on Bunny, making it seem like Bunny was to blame for the disturbance in the cafeteria.

All she wants is to be back with her friends at Wade’s Run, but to do that, she knows she has to get into trouble—something she has never really done—as that is how she will get sent to an alternative school. Little does she know that she doesn’t really get to choose where she goes to school—the district does. Finding a way to deal with the repercussions of the trouble she has wreaked in her new school and on her new classmates isn’t going to be easy, but she knows she has to do it to save face, even if just a little.

Bunny finds, through her getting into trouble experiment, that sometimes things aren’t quite what they seem, and sometimes what you’re looking for may be right under your nose, even if you’re not seeing it. This coming-of-age, heartfelt story about a girl who wants to find her friends may just turn into a story about how she finds herself.