By Jane O'Connor
Nancy is certain she'll dance the mermaid part in the recital. She gets cast as a tree instead, and her best friend gets the mermaid.
Nancy's dance class is putting on an undersea recital, and she's sure she and her best friend Bree will both be mermaids. Then the cast list goes up: Nancy is a tree, Bree is an oyster. A dancer twists her ankle, the parts get reshuffled, and Bree ends up as the mermaid — the one role Nancy wanted most. What follows is that hot, prickly feeling of being jealous of your own best friend. Nancy talks it out with her mom, works her way past it, and turns up on the night with a shell tiara she made as a gift for Bree, happy in the end with her own sparkly tree costume too.
For a child a little past the peak mermaid stage, this puts the mermaid somewhere real — a dance recital — and hangs a genuine feeling on it. Nancy wants the part, doesn't get it, and then has to watch her best friend get it instead. She doesn't rise above the jealousy in a page. She sits in it, admits it to her mom, and picks her way out. The Fancy Nancy world is an easy, comforting one to sink into, with a big cast and a whole shelf of other books behind it, so a child who takes to this one has plenty more waiting.