Thirteen-year-old Jenna has always been a devoted second-banana to her glamorous friend Liv. Ninety-year-old Elspeth Caples is a fragile shut-in eclipsed by a past filled with wrong turns and missed opportunities. Jenna has just begun her dreaded participation in a class project she and her friends call "fossil-sitting." So far this has meant being trapped in a dusty room reading heroic-pet stories to one Miss Elspeth Caples, a strange old lady determined to ignore her existence. But when, in desperation, Jenna decides to tell her "audience" about her rapidly unraveling life, everything changes--inside and out of that dusty room. In this beautifully layered story of friendships--gained, lost, changed--members of the "whatever" and the "fossil" generations embark on a tenderly funny, frequently awkward journey full of unsettling, exhilarating discoveries that make life at any age captivating and worthwhile. "In Visiting Miss Caples, one generation reaches out movingly to another at that scary, necessary moment when you declare your independence, and begin to look around for your life."-- Richard Peck, 1998 Newbery Honor winner