Dork Diaries 10: Tales from a Not-So-Perfect Pet Sitter, by Rachel Russell (Aladdin, 2015, 320pp, $13.99, grades 4-8, ages 8-11), 10th in a series* of 16.
Middle school girls who talk in all caps (and large print and teen lingo) and skip lines - about their antics over a little more than four days with a little budding romance thrown in and last-minute school projects that take them up to midnight to finish yet earn an A+!
Toss in a litter of golden retrievers and their mom, homeless, and what do you get? A fast-paced story about a little sister's babysitting a classroom goldfish and giving the pups a peanut butter facial and a massage with compost-pile oil.
How would you hide a litter of pups? In your bedroom? In the janitor's closet at school? What about the absent principal's office?
And in the beginning we meet mean girl MacKenzie who transfers schools - "popular" in the one she left behind but lying about her past achievements (they aren't hers) to her new school BFFs. The reader will wonder - why bring MacKenzie into the story in such a major way only to then not mention her at all (except for a brief mention at the end which serves as a hint of things to come - in future installments of the series).
Plenty of adorable drawings of adorable (high-fashion) middle-school girls (and puppies), some even over four pages that tell the story themselves, and a twist ending which engages the young reader and her parents - make for a fun book with real-to-life scrapes that are almost believable.
Don't forget this is a middle school girls' diary!
Girls will want to be Nikki or Zoey or Chloe since they are our "heroes" - they manage to dig themselves out of situations that could so easily spell tragedy and grounding forever.
What Would I Change?
Our girls are not pet sitters but dog sitters!
*The beginning:
 |
| Tales from a NOT-SO-Fabulous Life |
 |
| Tales from a NOT-SO-Batty Little Sister |
No comments:
Post a Comment