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The Way to Becoming Yaelle - Paperback & Kindle Edition
She's only in seventh grade, but Jan Miller already knows that the world is a pretty tough place for a thoughtful misfit.

• At school, the kids either bully her or ignore her – until Anna, the odd new girl, shows up and turns things upside-down.

  But home isn't much better. 

• Jan and her popular younger brother, Brian, just can't see eye-to-eye, with Brian pretending he doesn't even know her outside their home.
• And their father is always backing out of his scheduled weekends with them in favor of Athena, his wacky girlfriend.
• Then Jan starts feeling like she's getting in the way of her beautiful mother's search for a new husband.
• And to top it all off, Jan's nearly forgotten Jewish identity suddenly starts popping up everywhere. The problem is that everyone – even those who don't like Jews much – seem to know all about Judaism. Except Jan.

One day, Jan discovers that she shares a secret Hebrew name with a Biblical heroine Jan has never heard of: Yael. (Or as Jan spells it: Yaelle.)

Determined to give Jan more stability and better Jewish self-esteem, Jan's mother makes her spend the summer with her mother's old college roommate, Tova Rose, who is now the mother of a large Hassidic family in a picturesque ancient city in northern Israel. There, Jan befriends an artistic and passionate Hassidic girl who initiates Jan into a hidden part of Hassidic life. Just when Jan starts to realize how to become what she yearns to be, brutal terrorists seize a teenage Jewish soldier, plunging Jan into the darkest loneliness and confusion she's known yet.

Can Jan find the courage and the answers she needs to truly become Yaelle?

Paperback length: 276 pages
(This book makes a great bat mitzvah present!)