The Trouble with Tessa

The trouble with you is that you have a wild imagination, people tell Tessa. So what if she calls herself Athena, the goddess of wisdom and a woman of the twenty-first century? It's that wild imagination that will make her a good writer. When Tessa finds yellowing pages torn from a book in the bottom of a beat-up trunk in a musty attic filled with cobwebs and junk, she realizes what she's found: directions for magic spells. It was no coincidence that she found the sheets, Tessa decides. She has the power. When Tessa's diary with the magic spells disappears, she panics. What good is a witch without her spells? When she recovers her diary, she even makes a new friend. Again, Tessa believes her life is charmed. Tessa's developing powers hit a roadblock, however, when she casts a spell that she wishes she could take back. Suddenly, everything's changing, and Tessa fears that her secret powers are spinning out of control. When Tessa's reversal spell doesn't work, Tessa must rely on her friends and the power of her family's bond to get her out of this snare. Popular young adult author Ofelia Dumas Lachtman has once again crafted a novel about a precocious young girl and her unlimited curiosity. Tackling topics that teens face, Lachtman's novel is at once a funny story about a young girl's quest to make life interesting and about her learning to accept that sometimes family ties are the strongest magic in the world.