Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot
While on a trip to attend a family reunion and to meet many of her father's relatives for the first time, Amelia records in her notebook her hopes, fears, and impressions.
Problems arise for Amelia when she starts sixth grade at the same middle school where her older sister Cleo is an eighth-grader, and she gets the school's meanest teacher for three of her classes.