Tally and her best friend and neighbor Yulia have been sharing their ups and downs since they were little. Now they are in  middle school with its own set of up and downs. Yulia loves being in the school band. Tally loves snowboarding and is quite an important member on the snowboarding team. No problems so far. Enter Tally’s immigrant Vietnamese grandparents with whom she lives. Grammy and Pop want Tally to broaden her interests and try new things. Tally doesn’t think she has the time for anything more in her life right now. Grammy phones the school and has Tally signed up to begin band next week. WHAT?! It is the end of first semester, she doesn’t even have an instrument. No problem Grammy says. The band teacher, Mr. Byrd, will let her play the school’s French horn. How can this be? Tally has been calling the band members Band O’ Geeks for years. Yulia knows it, but doesn’t mind because she loves band. But how will Tally’s snowboarding friends react to her being in the band? (I guess band is not ‘cool’ in some parts of the country. I personally have not experienced this.) Yulia and Tally hatch a plan.  Tally will wear a disguise to band, it’s right after lunch, there will be time to change into it. So then Tally’s snowboarding friends at school won’t know of this terrible thing her grandparents have done to her. It works at first. Tally is able to unhappily take band during school . Then go to snowboarding practice after school. When Mr. Byrd asks if she has been practicing, Tally admits she has not. This is a big disappointment to the other French horn player. He tells her if one French horn sounds bad, the whole section sounds bad. It isn’t fair for her not to practice. Then, Mr. Byrd announces the big snowboarding competition to the band members during class. He tells the class it would be wonderful if Tally’s fellow band members would go to cheer her on. Yikes! on Saturday as Tally is getting ready to compete the Band O’ Geeks are there cheering for her. Tally does her best to ignore them. Her first run is great, but not great enough for first place. Here comes her second run. Just at a critical point, Tally looses her concentration and crashes. Tally is out with a sprained ankle for the rest of the season. Both her band friends and her snowboarding friends visit her at home. Eventually her snowboarding friend insult her band friends while both are visiting Tally.  Though ashamed, Tally doesn’t stand up for them. Back at school, the band members, even Yulia, give Tally the cold shoulder. Tally comes to a conclusion, ” Having to choose between my snowboarding friends and my band friends, if I could call them that, I mean, the snowboarders were my friends. But I’d been friends with Yulia for a long time. And some of the other band geeks were pretty cool, too. Who said I had to choose, anyway?” ( 89) Mr. Byrd explains how he lived through a similar experience. On a home visit, Jasper, a band member, discovers Tally can play guitar. This will later resolve the problem of snowboarders verses band geeks for Tally. The school band is scheduled to play at the school dance in a few weeks. Jasper, Yulia, and Mr. Byrd work together to give Tally a guitar song with Jasper on drums, and Yulia singing their original song entitled “Finding My Wings”  at the dance. Thus bringing both sides together for a happy ending.

Each chapter includes one black and white illustration by Anna Cattish. The girls are always ‘wide-eyed’ in a modern Japanese fashion. The cover art seems a little too young to grab middle school readers interest.