Home, and Other Big, Fat Lies by Jill Wolfson

Whitney, 11, a foster child with an eye for the beauty of nature and a talent for getting into trouble, takes on the loggers in her new hometown when she tries to save the biggest tree in the forest.

You can see Jill Wolfson's website here.

So I've been on fantasy overload--reading too many fantasy books in a row--and decided I needed a break. And what do I pick up? Another book about an angry foster kid! I must admit, it took me a while to get into this book. I didn't take to Whitney at first. She seemed to have such a chip on her shoulder about being a foster kid. I can't really blame her for that--she's on her 12th foster home and she's not even 12 years old--but it did keep me from liking her right away. Fortunately, she found some kindred spirits in her school--both other foster kids and a really neat science teacher. And once she started going into the forest, she began to really open up to the world of possibilities that she had never noticed or never been exposed to before. By the end, she even has a sense of belonging that she has never before experienced in her life.