The Vo family has just moved to Paris from a small town in northern France. The change is almost more than nine-year-old Vero can manage. Her parents are too busy to keep an eye on her in the big city, and her older brother, Philippe, wants nothing to do with her. In fact, the siblings can barely stand each other. Since Vero and Philippe aren't allowed to play outside, they must find ways to amuse themselves. Vero devises imaginative activities like raising a prize snail, creating families of chestnuts, and engineering a fake monster to scare her brother. Philippe does his best to put up with her antics, though the task becomes increasingly difficult. Francine, the young maid and nanny, is little help, consumed as she is by housework and a new boyfriend. Over the course of the year, everyone in the family learns to adjust to their new home. Vero survives her brother's meanness, her father's attempts at cooking, and a new school. And when Francine is fired, Vero and Philippe unite in the cause to get her back.

 

There are 144 pages in this book. This book was published 2001 by Cricket Books, a division of Carus Publishing Co .

Caroline Hatton was born in Normandy to Vietnamese immigrants and grew up in Paris. She has a pharmacist degree from the University of Paris and a Ph. D. in chemistry from the University of California at Los Angeles. She worked as the Associate Director of the UCLA Olympic Laboratory for a decade and a half, testing athletes for performance-enhancing drugs. Preston McDaniels is the illustrator of the Phineas L. MacGuire series and Cynthia Rylant's Lighthouse Family series. He lives in Aurora, Nebraska, with his wife and two daughters.