Trouble with a Capital O

This perkily paced if predictable caper launches the Miss O & Friends series, a spinoff of an interactive tween-targeted Web site that features five middle-school girls. Narrating this installment is Miss O (née Olivia), an ace soccer player and aspiring baker, who has a rocky start to fifth grade. She is assigned to the "dungeon of dread," the classroom of an allegedly ultra mean teacher, who—a Google search reveals—may have spent some time behind bars. Miss O's sister, Juliette, a sixth-grader who has moved to another division of their private school, has abandoned Miss O and her three best friends for another cache of friends and is too caught up in her new life to pay attention to her younger sibling's problems. Luckily, Miss O's "peeps"—stylish Justine, sports fanatic Isabella and gymnast Harlie—are there to support their beleaguered pal and encourage her in her attempt to win the school baking contest. Speregen tidily pulls together some standard ingredients of commercial middle-grade fiction: friends' camaraderie, siblings' squabbling and a dollop of melodrama. This may well entice girls who met these characters on the Internet to get to know them better on the written page. Ages 8-up. (Aug.)