Zeely Author:Virginia Hamilton Zeely Tayber was more than six and half feet tall, thin and deeply dark as a pole of Ceylon ebony.... — She had very high cheekbones and her eyes seemed to turn in on themselves. Geeder couldn't say what expression she saw on Zeely's face. She knew only that it was calm and that it had pride in it, and the face was the most beautiful she had ever... more » seen....
To Geeder Perry, eleven years old and free for the first time to make her summer on the farm something special, Zeely is the embodiment of dreams. One day Geeder finds a remarkable photograph in an old magazine--a portrait of a Watutsi queen who looks just like Zeely. Suddenly she decides that the regal Zeely must be a queen too, and, swept up in her fantasies, she tells all the children in the village.
Only Zeely herself can bring Geeder back to reality. How she succeeds is at once moving, surprising, and reassuring--to Geeder most of all.« less