Eleven-year-old Julia is, by all appearances, a typical southern California preteen. She tolerates soccer practice, does well in school, looks forward to sleepovers with her best friend, and is becoming ever more critical of her parents and aware of changes in the social dynamics of the kids around her. In THE AGE OF MIRACLES by Karen Thompson Walker, Julia will lose friends, fall in love, learn harsh truths about her parents, and experience the types of happiness and tensions found in coming-of-age novels. What is remarkable about this inventive story is that Julia does all of this against the