Babyface [Paperback]

Fourteen-year-old Toni has always felt lucky--but her luck begins to change the summer her father suffers a near-fatal heart attack, her best friend moves away, and Toni is sent to New York City stay with her older sister, Martine, who reveals a devastating secret about their family.

A teen's illusions of her perfect family are shattered

Mazer offers a thorough, sensitive exploration of parent/teen relationships as she reveals how a sheltered girl discovers that the people she loves are neither perfect nor infallible. --Publishers Weekly 

NORMA FOX MAZERis an award-winning novelist and a faculty member for the Vermont College MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program. Her books have received a Newbery Honor, a Christopher Award, an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, a National Book Award nomination, and other honors. She lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

CHAPTER 1
TONI HAD ALWAYS thought of herself as lucky. Toni Luck, she called it. She was lucky in her parents, lucky to have Julie. Those were the big things. But what about the little things, like the way Paws had come to her, just showed up at their house one day and stayed? Pure luck. Or how about the way she was always finding money in the street? Usually it was only a quarter or a dime, but once she had found a ten-dollar bill, and another time a silver dollar. Julie said Toni was probably the only kid in the world who could take a casual walk anywhere and pick up her allowance on the way.
 Tonis lucky feeling about herself was why she wasnt even that surprised when a reporter from the Ridgewood Record wanted to write a story about her and Julie. Julie was the one who got excited. This could be important. What if a Hollywood producer sees my picture
 Julie, I really dont think they read the Record in Hollywood, Toni said.
 But what if one did and saw me and thought, Bl³{