When oddball 12-year-old Amy Almond's collage creations spring to life in the form of three magical animal-headed personalities, Amy uses their powers to get one over on her bullies, stepdad, and teacher before the colorful trio ultimately helps her make amends and earn a real friend.

SYNOPSIS:

AMY ALMOND is an eccentric and misunderstood middle schooler. The kids in her grade bully her and the teachers don’t appreciate her creativity. Amy lives with her mother, BEE, and Bee’s well-intentioned but hopelessly boring boyfriend, STEVE, a brilliant programmer stuck in a dead-end job. One day at school, a bully smashes Amy’s trusty red scissors, but on the way home, a stray cat leads her to a pair of rainbow-colored scissors which she pulls from an old tree stump like King Arthur. That evening, Bee and Steve receive a phone call from Amy’s English teacher, MS. SILVERSTEIN who warns of Amy’s slipping grades, attributing them to her constant in-class collaging. The phone call sparks a blowout argument between Amy, Bee, and Steve. After the fight, Amy locks herself in her room, takes out the rainbow scissors, and begins collaging furiously.

Using a National Geographic and a Vogue magazine, Amy creates a collage consisting of three animals, each

dressed in a colorful tuxedo. A tiger in a red tux, a ram in a blue tux, and a canary in a yellow tux. In the middle of the night, the cutouts spring to life in the form of RUBY RHYME, HUBIE HYME, and LEMON LIME. They terrify Amy at first, until they introduce themselves. Ruby is the red tiger, who speaks in elegant rhymes (and represents Amy’s wit and intellect.) Hubie is the ram, who speaks with a tough Jersey accent (and represents Amy’s anger, aggression and strength.) The canary is Lemon Lime, who speaks fast, with lots of nervous energy (and represents Amy’s anxiety and creativity.) It isn’t long before Amy and her new friends start getting into all sorts of mischief. Using their magic and invisibility, they help Amy unleash a series of revenge pranks against Ms. Silverstein and the bullies. They then help Amy bust out of school and ditch a challenging exam.

After a fun-filled day of skipping, Amy’s friends decide to show her where they come from. They lead her deep into the forest and teach her the sacred sonnet that unlocks the entrance to Wild World, an enchanted land home to hundreds of other eccentric animal-people. In this fantastical realm, the Royal Lion puts Amy to the test to see if she’s truly worthy of membership in their secret society. Amy passes inspection, learns to dance like a true wild thing and is named an honorary delegate of the woodland council. Once back in the real world, Amy’s new status starts going to her head and her pranking spree gets out of hand. Before long, Amy gets busted by the fuzz, her friends disappear, and Bee and Steve are forced to bail her out. Down at the station, Amy makes things worse when she provokes a conflict between Steve and an angry biker, who sends Steve to the hospital with a broken schnoz.

That night, when Ruby, Hubie, and Lemon reappear, Amy is quick to accuse them of treachery. How could they have left her to the pigs? The fight escalates and Amy ends up ripping down the cutouts from her bedroom wall. With the cutouts torn to pieces, Amy’s friends vanish again. The following morning, Amy is hit with the weight of her recent actions. The choice to skip school has left her with failing grades, the other kids won’t speak to her out of fear, and her family is on the brink of bankruptcy. Unable to call upon her magical friends for help, Amy uses the tricks she learned from their short time together to try and repair her shattered world. Amy employs Ruby’s signature rhyming technique to memorize her study packet

and earns a perfect score on the final exam. She adopts Hubie’s confident and care-free attitude, which regains her the respect and admiration of her classmates. Lastly, Amy embraces her inner Lemon-like craziness to successfully sell a group of investors on Steve’s latest invention!

Amy goes to the woods to cremate the paper bodies of her friends when they appear once again and promise to remain at her side forever, as friends do. On the walk home, Amy bumps into BERRY, a fellow 6th-grade misfit, strikes up a conversation and invites him over for froyo. From having no friends, to imaginary friends, to one real friend, Amy finally becomes a friend to herself.