Some Things Never Change is the story of Amber, a preteen who is isolated from her peers and from her parent. She has problems that are very familiar to young girls. She thinks that she is ugly, unloved, and unlovable, doomed to a life of loneliness. She cannot find a way to combat the depression she experiences, and seeks to escape its pain through flights of fantasy. These dreams are full of youthful humor and exuberance that await release when she discovers the power of her own potential.

Through a set of circumstances and against her will, Amber is forced to spend a summer with an eccentric and little known grandmother. While there, she is challenged by newness, diversity, and a philosophy for living that reflects values previously unknown to her. She responds by reaching within herself to define her own characteristics and her own destiny. A far more engaging and confident youth returns to find that while she has changed greatly, so have her perceptions of those she left behind.

Charmaine L. Ciardi is a child, adolescent, and family counselor with long experience helping young girls just like Amber to find their own strengths. She has taught at several universities, and lectures and writes extensively about family issues. She is the mother of three and grandmother to three more.

Juliet C. Raines is a teacher who works with children of all ages who need the intervention of a skilled and caring mentor. She has collaborated on several books that explore developmental, educational, and parenting issues. She is the mother of three girls.

The authors are mother and daughter, and live near to one another in the suburbs of Washington, DC.

There was simply no way to deny it. It rose, shiny and red, in a perfectly symmetrical cone shape, just to the left of my nose. Beneath its surface, evil forces conspired to cause its eruption. It would, I knew, grow and grow until it completed its zit life, and then more would come, and more.

As I studied my reflection in the still steamy bathroom mirror, I took a step backwards so as to evaluate the bigger picture. I studied the reflection of Amber Patrice Rockland (try living up to a name like that!) In the whole scheme of things, the lonely pimple’s importance began to shrink.

I was not really ugly, I thought, just terribly, boringly, plain. I was ordinary to a fault, maybe just about invisible in a group of two or more.

The problems began at the very top, I mused, with my mousy, nondescript hair. It was hair that was neither thick nor silky, hair the color of mud and generally having about as much shine. It was limp, tired hair, hair that dangled and twisted and knotted and never exactly looked brushed. It was not hair that could sway or swing, bounce or bob. It was hair that hung in fulfillment of its duty. It was hair that would never inspire poetry or pride. And despite its many trips to salons with imported names, it somewhat willfully did its own thing, just hanging and hanging forevermore.

Searching as I had so many times before, I moved on to what my Mother had always called my best feature, my eyes. Let’s see just what we have in the way of eyes, I continued. In color, the eyes were a medium shade of hazel, which really meant a mix of brown and olive green. Hazel was a nice way of describing the color of combat uniforms, otherwise known as Army green. My eyes would be a lovely compliment to a war tank. They could open and close quite well, I’d say that in their favor, and they could see far into the distance without help. For reading, however, they tended to turn pinkish and then red without lenses. To correct for this imperfection, I had always worn glasses, pink plastic rims encircling pinkish glass. The left eye was a little higher than the right, giving me a slightly crooked look. Mother denied this but we knew it was true. The eyes had about them a rather mediumish fringe of medium brown lashes. These, the lashes, stuck straight out as if in a salute.

Leaving the eyes, for lack of anything more to note, I began to examine my nose in its entirety. Noses are basically weird, jutting out as they do with hairy holes that end in some mysterious region deep within the brain. I could remember as a very young child being extremely curious about where exactly those funny holes led. I never did get a good answer to that one. Every time I ventured just a little poke with my finger (for curiosity, of course) my Mother would rip my finger from my nostril and shriek, "Dirty, dirty! Good little girls don’t do that." You'd have thought I'd been rummaging through last week's garbage, to hear her. (I can't remember doing anything else that ever got her that upset.) For the longest time I was scared that something awful must be lurking up there. God must have been in such a silly mood when He got around to designing noses. My nose could be worse, I guessed. It flared too much around the bottom and bumped too much on its way to the top. Besides which, it got zitty whenever it wanted. My nose was adequate to hold the center of my glasses. That was about all there was to say about my nose.