Excerpt: From 'Raymie Nightingale,' by Kate DiCamillo

The way that Raymie imagined her plan unfolding was that her father would be sitting in some restaurant, in whatever town he had run away to. He would be with Lee Ann Dickerson, the dental hygienist. They would be sitting together in a booth, and her father would be smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee, and Lee Ann would be doing something stupid and inappropriate, like maybe filing her nails (which you should never do in public). At some point, Raymie's father would put out his cigarette and open the paper and clear his throat and say, "Let's see what we can see here," and what he would see would be Raymie's picture.

He would see his daughter with a crown on her head and a bouquet of flowers in her arms and a sash across her chest that said LITTLE MISS CENTRAL FLORIDA TIRE 1975.

And Raymie's father, Jim Clarke of Clarke Family Insurance, would turn to Lee Ann and say, "I must return home immediately. Everything has changed. My daughter is now famous. She has been crowned Little Miss Central Florida Tire."

Lee Ann would stop filing her nails. She would gasp out loud in surprise and dismay (and also, maybe, in envy and admiration).

That's the way Raymie imagined it would happen.

Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.

But first she needed to learn how to twirl a baton.

Or so said Mrs. Sylvester.

From "Raymie Nightingale." Text copyright © 2016 by Kate DiCamillo. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, Mass.