The RRP of this book is a whole £4 more than the average Dork Diary. What do you get for that extra outlay, and why do I even point this out? Well, both this series and that are designed as if they were created by a member of the target audience - an American tweenage girl with a lot to say about herself, her school life and how, once you've avoided your parents embarrassing you, the popular girls at school being condescending and rude at the best of times, everything in life will still work its damnedest to heap ignominy and embarrassment on you.
| The Popularity Papers by Amy Ignatow | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A bright and breezy entry to the world of comic books for reluctant readers. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 208 | Date: October 2011 |
| Publisher: Amulet Books | |
| ISBN: 9781419700637 | |
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The Dork Diaries does this by some chatty journal entries, and lots of stick-man cartoons. This actually is a full-on large journal size, and has a pair of creators, quirky blonde Lydia, and artistic brunette Julie. The text is often set out as if it were two pals passing notes under the desk at school, while Julie illustrates everything, from their wishes to what actually happens. Here, with Lydia back at home having been in Europe for an extended trip throughout book two, they set out those wishes with a set list of things they want to do - be more artistic, be more successful... You can see where this is going.
Beyond the fact that Julie, the artistic one, has a chunky handwriting, and Lydia the most stylish joined-up italics (so much so I couldn't read one of her nicknames for others until Julie repeated it), the problem I felt was that you might just have stuck with the one. They join in so often on both pages they come out of things as an amorphous blob, rather than as distinct characters. I'm coming to this new at book three, always the wrong thing to do, and rating it as such, but it didn't work to inspire me to return.
But then, I'm not the reluctant reader for whom such a book might be manna from heaven. There's so little to actually read here, and the sketchy, crumpled look of the pages means nobody in the target audience need go far from themselves to see what the heroines are doing or thinking - Julie and Lydia can be engaged with on that regard, if not separately. The plot as such is easily conveyed through some internet chat print-outs, and the bright, gaudy home-made artworks, all done considerably realistically by Amy Ignatow.
So there might well be more to this than meets the eye - and I'm confident that meeting these girls at book one would provide that. Here though nothing much is advanced in the plot, meaning this is rather like a sit-com where everyone comes out the other end of the episode practically as they went in, and more needed to be advanced from Ignatow to me to show her creations apart.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
The superior Dork Diaries have reached volume three.
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You can read more book reviews or buy The Popularity Papers by Amy Ignatow at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Popularity Papers by Amy Ignatow at Amazon.com.
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