Describing a teacher's struggle to help her seventh-grade students reach their full potential, this book is about girls--their learning, their social dilemmas, and their dreams, hopes, and fears. The book reveals the obstacles the teacher faced and how her students collaborated with her to become curriculum builders as they explored issues such as duplicity, vengeance, and homophobia in their literature, their writing, and their talking. Chapters in the book are: (1) Introduction: Learning to Listen; (2) Sometimes I Wish: Figuring Out What Matters Most; (3) Listening Harder: Echoes from the Island; (4) The Curious Ballast: Why We Read Books; (5) Dissonance and Harmony: Talking Things Over; (6) Making Room for Truth: Lessons of Little Tree; (7) A Real Conversation; (8) A Place for the Genuine: Living with Poetry; (9) Let's Remember: Stories of Our Lives; (10) Things Worth Doing: Forging New Connections; (11) Celebrating Possibilities: A Valuable Experiment; and (12) What Matters Most: Loving What We Love. An epilogue (Vigilance Renewed) concludes the book. A suggested reading list developed by the students and lists of poetry, memoirs, memoir resources, and female protagonists in seventh graders' reading choices are attached. (RS)