Dork Diaries: How to Dork Your Diary by Rachel Renee Russell
The clue is in the title. This is volume 3 and a half in the ongoing series of adventures for Nikki Maxwell. Here she gets her knickers into a right twist because her diary, which of course contains three books of adventures lusting after the school hunk, hating the school bitch and copious amounts of embarrassment, seems to have got lost at school. Her search for it takes her into places you wouldn't expect, closer to her BFFs, and into a major discussion about the merits and style of creating your own diary.
| Dork Diaries: How to Dork Your Diary by Rachel Renee Russell | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: There's not much of a diary in this entry in Russell's series, until you finish it off with your own. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? No |
| Pages: 288 | Date: September 2011 |
| Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-0857073525 | |
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Which is where you come in. It's half a book we have here in that at least half is blank for you to conclude it with the beginnings of your own journal, but also to respond to many stimuli. There's a pop psychology quiz to see if you should carry on with paper or go online , blogging for the world, or using facebook for getting your thoughts down. You can design your diary cover, illustrate you writing in it, and itemise your current life by way of favourite songs, food and boys.
Now we at the Bookbag have never given this series an extra mark for being kind to the unconfident reader, but we have been quick to praise books such as this series for the brisk, lively, well-illustrated way they speed anyone through each adventure. The production qualities and design are here exactly as you would expect, and this takes few brain cells to read through for the accomplished, but still a warm sense of achievement where needed.
Similarly, we're not going to laud this book for its blankness, but who knows, this may be the impetus for an unconfident writer to get set on the road to who-knows-where. To many young children, writing down their greatest hopes for the future, or biggest embarrassments, and spelling out their own rap, would be anathema. Russell is clearly an author first and foremost, and this is definitely a commercial exercise, of course, but it may substitute for some that teacher that is needed to get someone, pen in hand, anxious to see the end result of their own introspective yet creative writing.
Just as long as they then get to keep it in a safe place...
And even for those readers for whom the series is a frivolous, enjoyable entertainment, there is still enough here to keep them shushed for a while. I've deliberately said do not borrow this book in the check-boxes to my right, for there is still a lot here for anyone of any literary ability to join in with, and I know how cash-strapped our libraries are...
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
You can see how the first two adventures of the real series are now in one volume here.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Dork Diaries: How to Dork Your Diary by Rachel Renee Russell at Amazon.com.
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