Summary

Dasani Joanie-Lashawn Coates, known to all as Dasani, gently stirs as Chapter 1 opens. She is always the first in the family to awaken, and she tends faithfully to her seven siblings even as her mother and step-father continue to sleep. The family of ten has no home of their own and instead crowds into one room at the Auburn Family Residence, a homeless shelter overrun with mice and roaches.

Dasani prepares for the first day of sixth grade with the low-grade worry that her schoolmates will find out where she lives and make endless fun of her. She makes sure to walk home by a "circuitous" (8) route so that no one learns her secret. Chapter 2 focuses closely on the inner workings of Dasani's school. The women who run her middle school (known as McKinney) are powerful, especially the sixty-year-old principal, Miss Holmes...