Coco’s exuberance shines through on nearly every page. She is irrepressible, intelligent, frustrated and determined. She is inventive, particularly when it comes to thinking of ways to break rules or get her way. Like the time when she and her friend concocted a plan to get better lunches. They would steal all the cutlery from the school lunchroom! What better way to ensure at least a week of going home for lunch? All was well until the girls, clanking their way out of school with their bloomers full of real silverware, hit the stairs, whereupon the elastic on her friend’s bloomers gave way and all that silverware went clattering down the stairs. The uproar from this debacle was epic. Suspension, hysterics and profuse apologies netted a lighter sentence for Coco.
Coco’s antics will leave you in stitches. And arranged as it is in this sweet little volume (a mere 6 x 4 inch trim size), you will enjoy her story as the year unfolds, with trips to the summer cabin on White Bear Lake, birthday parties, and skating parties. The book includes several family photos in the back, as well as an afterword by Meier, telling us what became of Coco. A real story of a real girl, almost too good to be true. As Meier says of her hunts for treasures of the past, “Sometimes you get something golden. Finding Coco was one of my best.”
Meier is the author of such bestsellers as Bring Warm Clothes and Too Hot, Went to Lake. She is a former reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and just another one of our Minnesota treasures. For a conversation with Meier and to find out more about her work, check here.
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