Eliza Naumann from Bee Season: A Novel is the main character in the novel. She is in the fifth grade and lives in her own self determined world. She creates a fantasy family and life in her head, based in part on tv reruns that she avidly watches. She would have gone along like this except that she wins the local spelling bee. When she does this, she begins to realize that her real family doesn't measure up to the fantasy family she's created. But, instead of a tremendous fall, she begins to realize the treasures she does have in her real family, and the spelling bee is her entry into a more mature view of life in general.
