At the beginning of their first adventure, Ernestine and Amanda agree on one thing: they aren't going to be friends. Ernestine thinks wealthy Amanda is stuck-up. Amanda thinks Ernestine is too fat. But as a year goes by and the lives of these ten-year-old piano students become more and more intertwined, the girls are amazed to discover how much they are beginning to need each other.In the second adventure Ernestine's father has lost his job, Amanda's parents are separating, and neither girl wants to go off to camp. But Ernestine's summer at an Africian-American girl's camp ends up being filled with fun. While Amanda's, at a posh predominantly white camp, forces her to reconsider what it really means to be a friend. "A gentle, sweet, simply told tale of family, community, and friendship.... Will enhance any library's collection". — School Library Journal

Two young African-American girls, Ernestine and Amanda, go to separate summer camps, and although they both enjoy the fun of camp, they each realize that their friends from home sometimes understand them best.

For Ernestine and Amanda, the sixth grade brings dance classes, pajama parties, the arrival of the "cutest boy on the planet," new friends, and the formation of Amanda's exclusive club, C.L.U.B.—an organization that excludes Ernestine from membership.

Helping in the opening of a new dance studio, Ernestine and Amanda are on the case when the studio is vandalized and consider putting aside their differences in order to catch the culprit.

Both Ernestine and Amanda get an unexpected shock when they enter eighth grade at Du Bois. Their best friends, Alicia and Clovis, have decided to test the "waters of integration" by attending the formerly all-white Central Elementary. Ernestine focuses on rebuilding her friendship with Clovis after his year away. Amanda’s increasing interest in boys reaches a height at a Halloween party both girls and their friends attend. Both girls experience a life-changing event that might help answer the question that has persisted from the very "Can Ernestine and Amanda ever truly become friends?"