SOLVED. Middle Grade/YA book about a gloomy, emo girl with dreadlocks that moved to a new town and was too resigned to try to make friends. [s]

[Michelle]

I read this book sometime between 2011-2013. It's part of a series, with each book featuring a different girl, and might be set in the UK. This one is themed around friendship and struggling to fit in. The main girl is a white girl with dreadlocks that she ended up with from chronically twisting strands of hair together whenever she was in a bad mood. These hair strands became stiffer and stiffer until they turned into dreadlocks. I can’t remember what happened in between, but eventually the main character makes friends and starts to feel a sense of belonging in her new town.

Later she has the chance to attend a school dance or some event but is reluctant to, because she feels self-conscious about her dreadlocks. A friendly barber that she is well-acquainted with cuts off her dreadlocks, which freaks her out at first, but the barber worked some magic called “hair extensions”, and with this makeover she regained her glossy, shoulder length hair.

This description was not the main plot of the book, but these were the plot points that left the deepest impressions in my mind that I’m still able to retain.

[Capn]

Recipe for Rebellion in the "Zodiac Girls" series, maybe? https://www.goodreads.com/series/6787...

(Came up in a kw search)

[Michelle]

Capn wrote: "Recipe for Rebellion in the "Zodiac Girls" series, maybe? https://www.goodreads.com/series/6787...
[bookcover:Recipe for Rebellion|..."

Yes, that's it tysm! Mind if I ask what keywords you used? I could not for the life of me find it with kw search.

[Capn]

Oh yeay!

I'd be happy to tell you, but I can't remember now. :( The text search on OpenLibrary is pretty great, IF they have the book. I would have used "hair extensions", "dreadlocks", "barber" and probably "dance", "school" and maybe "makeover" if that didn't pull it. I don't know the book myself, so would have been limited to what you told me.

The downside with an OL text search is that you can't filter the results by genre, age or publication date. That's where WorldCat is best, but you have to get lucky that 1. They have a robust synopsis for the book available, or 2. Lots of tagged subjects using those very terms. :) If I used WorldCat, I'd probably have tried "dreadlocks" "hair extensions" "dance", for my 3 kw, then search print book, English, dates 1999 - 2013 or something. THEN I'd filter the results by audience: juvenile, content: fiction, and be looking for something in a series. :)