Description
Fifth grader Dara is genuinely gobsmacked when she isn't given the part of Maria.in the school performance of The Sound of Music. Is it because evil Miss Snarling,.er, Snelling doesn't think an Asian girl would make a good Austrian nun? Nope -- Dara actually doesn't get any part (except a spot in the choir) because it turns out she isn't the extremely talented actor she thinks she is. Dara's eventual realizations, that acting is more than making dramatic faces and that it involves putting.oneself in another's shoes help her become a better actor along with a better friend, and sister. Her older brother, kind and perceptive, is their parents' biological son; her younger sister was adopted from Russia; Dara, adopted from Cambodia, hates sticking out like a sore thumb in her otherwise white family.