Age: 24
female
Skai Jackson (born April 8, 2002) is an American actress best known for portraying the role of Zuri Ross in the Disney Channel sitcom Jessie (2011–2015), which she subsequently reprised in its sequel Bunk'd (2015–2018). Jackson began acting at the age of five, making her debut in the film Liberty Kid (2007). She has provided the voice of Glory Grant across the Marvel Rising series (2018–2019) and voiced Summer in the animated series DreamWorks Dragons: Rescue Riders (2019–2022). In 2019, Jackson released her debut book, Reach for the Skai: How to Inspire, Empower, and Clapback. The following year, she was a semi-finalist on the 29th season of Dancing with the Stars.
Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica, with her grandmother (who wants to improve the family’s social standing), her Aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin), and her mother Paulette (who’s rarely home). When Sophie is offered the chance to move to France for work, she seizes the opportunity, and promises to send for her niece in one year’s time. All Pumkin has to do is pass her French entrance exam so she can attend school there. But when Pumkin’s grandmother dies, she’s left alone with her volatile mother, and as soon as her estranged father turns up—as lazy and conniving as ever—the household’s fortunes take a turn for the worse. Pumkin must somehow find a way to raise the money for her French exam, so she can free herself from her household and reunite with her beloved aunt in France. In a moment of ingenuity, she turns her passion for baking into a true business. Making batches of sweet potato pudding, coconut drops and chocolate cakes, Pumkin develops a booming trade—but when her school and her mother find out what she’s up to, everything she’s worked so hard for may slip through her fingers. . . . Sweetness in the Skin is a funny and heartbreaking story about a young girl figuring out who she is, what she is capable of—and where she truly belongs.
