SOLVED. YA/MG with girl, uptight father & guess-your-age at fair. [s]

[Spockles]

I can't remember the plot of the book, but it might be about a girl (aged 8-14) and her father. Contemporary fiction, read around 2005.

Her father is stuffy/uptight. There's a scene where the family (mother, father, girl, and possibly a sister) go the the local fair. A worker at a booth harks at them, saying he can guess their ages (give or take a year) or they get a prize. The girl is excited/amused. The worker guesses the dad to be 38 (or maybe it was 48?), and the dad gets really huffy (the implication is that the estimate was too high/the dad looks old for his age). I think he is given a stuffed animal for compensation.

That scene is all I remember.

[Kris]

Spockles, can you tell us more about the girl - her personality, interests, skills (such as academics, sports, dance, art), friends, etc.?

[Elizabeth]

Wendy Mass's Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall perhaps?

[Spockles]

Kris, no, I can't remember anything else, aside from the feeling that they're a white family.

Elizabeth, I don't think that's it, but thank you.

[Nicole]

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech? If I remember right there was a part where Phoebe was telling Sal about her father's age being guessed too high at a fair.

[Spockles]

Ooh, I have definitely read that ages ago, and I think that's the one. Thanks, Nicole!