Frank, Lucy. Just ask Iris.Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster U.S. publishing company. It was founded in 1924 by Richard L. Simon (1899–1960) and M. Lincoln Schuster (1897–1970), whose initial project, the original crossword-puzzle book, was a best-seller. , Aladdin. 214p. c2001. 0-689-84454-9. $4.99. J To quote KLIATT's November 200I review of the hardcover edition: It's the summer before seventh grade, and 12-year-old Iris, half-Latina and half-Jewish, has just moved to a new apartment in a rundown building in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , along with her mother and her older brother. Iris isn't allowed to go out anywhere without one of them along. She is supposed to stay at home and learn to type, but where is the fun in that? Also, men are beginning to gawk at Iris' chest--she needs to buy a bra, as the kindly woman who lives upstairs points out, but her hardworking Mami has no time or money to take Iris shopping. Iris becomes attached to a cat that enters the apartment through the fire escape, and she takes to sneaking up and down the fire escape herself to find out where the cat goes. In the process, she meets her neighbors, and she begins to do jobs for them (babysitting, running errands down to the bodega bo·de·ga n. 1. A small grocery store, sometimes combined with a wineshop, in certain Hispanic communities. 2. A warehouse for the storage of wine. on the ground level) to make money to go buy a bra: her little business is called "Just Ask Iris." She befriends Will, a boy confined to a wheelchair who lives upstairs, and together they manage to conceal the upstairs Cat Lady's many cats from the health inspector A health inspector, or Environmental Health Specialist is a public employee who investigates health hazards in a wide variety of locations, then will take action to mitigate or eliminate the hazards. and pressure the landlord into fixing the elevator, so that Will can get out and get to school. And Iris finally makes enough money to buy a bra, too. This is a funny, touching tale of city life by the talented author of Oy, Joy! and I Am an Artichoke artichoke, name for two different plants of the family Asteraceae (aster family), both having edible parts. The French, or globe, artichoke (Cynara scolymus , Will You Be My Brussels Sprout?. Iris is a spunky spunk·y adj. spunk·i·er, spunk·i·est Informal Spirited; plucky. spunk  i·ly adv. and believable heroine, and the multiethnic characters are skillfully portrayed, from Iris' loyal but easily embarrassed brother to the wacky Cat Lady to Will, who slowly emerges from his isolation and bitterness as he and Iris build a friendship and unite against the bureaucracy that threatens their building. A good choice for middle school and public libraries.
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