In Caroline Stellings’ The Contest, the latest instalment in Second Story Press’s Gutsy Girl series, 11-year-old Rosy Taylor is desperate to win the local Anne of Green Gables look-alike contest. The problem? Rosy is poor, half-Mohawk, and lacks the ginger locks required to seal the deal. After recruiting help from her family and neighbours, Rosy finds herself in the finals of the contest and poised to win it all.

While the premise has promise, the execution of The Contest is heavy-handed. The omniscient narrator constantly refers to the Taylor family’s poverty, a subject better developed through subtle detail. Similarly, while a spunky, half-Mohawk protagonist laudably fills a gap in contemporary children’s fare, Rosy’s repeated references to her racial background come off as inauthentic. Instead of lending guts to this girl, phrases such as “Rosy was glad to be half Mohawk. She just knew it made her fascinating” flatten Rosy into a cardboard cut-out of an interracial character.  Even the youngest of readers do not require such stifling reminders of a protagonist’s life circumstances.

This clumsiness aside, freckles of fun do dot this Anne-inspired tale. With her hyperactive imagination, Rosy is reminiscent of our beloved carrot top. She treasures her family’s rare treat of PEI potatoes, likening their dirt to pixie dust. Her interactions with Lydia, a friendly fellow competitor, are evocative of the friendship between Anne and Diana. Just as Anne is sometimes lovingly baffled by Diana’s flightiness, Rosy compares Lydia’s hard-to-read persona to the unreachable bottom of a ketchup bottle. The suspense surrounding the look-alike contest is palpable and will propel a young reader through this book in a sitting or two.

The Contest will find an audience in middle-grade Anne admirers, of which there is likely no shortage.