Zoe Elias has big musical dreams. A soon as she gets a glossy baby grand piano, she'll be on her way. Trouble is, what Zoe gets is a wood-grained, vinyl-seated, wheeze-bag organ. The Perfectone D-60. How will she ever be discovered as a prodigy when her lesson book is The Hits of the Seventies? Not eve cha-cha beat can make the theme song from The Brady Bunch sound like Beethoven. If you add to that the problem a mom who's always at work, a dad who's afraid to leave the house, and an odd boy who follows her home from school every day, Zoe's big dreams are looking pretty lopsided. But when she enters the annual Perform-O-Rama organ competition, Zoe discovers that life is full of surprises - and that maybe a little lopsidedness will help her find what she's really hoping for.

Linda Urban