Bookathon - R

 

Reading, writing and arithmetic? 

Today's author has 3 R's. Rachel Renee Russell, aka writer of the wildly popular series for girls Dork Diaries. For those who don't know, it's like Diary of a Wimpy Kid but told from a 14 year old girl's point of view. Nikki Maxwell and written in the style of Wimpy Kid, i.e hand written with cartoons. 

Girls absolutely love these books. As a former girl, I like them too. I guess you can say I never really grew up. Nikki lives with her mum dad, and little sister Brianna and goes to Westchester County Day School, which is actually a real-life well-to-do district in the state of New York. The problem is at this new school she is not popular, because she is a self-confessed dork and has a locker right next to a very mean snobby girl called Mackenzie Hollister who hates Nikki and makes fun of her clothes and in general acts like snakes-on-legs super villain, always bullying Nikki and giving her micro aggressions. Mackenzie is part of a group Nikki calls the CCPs -- Cute Cool and Popular. They wear the latest fashions just because they can and never have to want for anything. Nikki's dad works as a pest exterminator which is decidedly NOT cool and she is forever trying to hide the fact that that's what he does for a living.

Before I go off and tell you the entire plot of Dork Diaries I just want to establish that, at 14 years of age, these things are the most important thing in a girls life - to be able to make friends, be a friend, and fit in at school. Unlike the movie Mean Girls, Nikki did not come from living in Africa, or Grease, where Sandy came from Australia actually it's never mentioned in the books that Nikki is African American and her tormentor is what people in America call WASP. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. In the books, that doesn't figure into it. It's just full on class war. It all comes to a head in probably the best book IMHO is Frenemies Forever. This is the one where both Nikki and Mackenzie get transferred to a fancy private school. 

Luckily Nikki makes some new BFFs called Chloe and Zoe (I know right?) and they look out for each other, though the one friend Nikki makes that is most important is her diary which, you dear reader have the absolute privelege of reading. It's hilariously funny, smart and easy to read which is why girls from age 7 up love these books. Dork Diaries has gone on to about 12 books so far with her many adventures and they get better each time. At school, she gets involved with amongst other things, being a clumsy ice skater, organising a school dance, coming top in an art competition, helping out in the library, adopting a puppy, becoming a pop star, writing an anonymous advice column for the school newspaper and I think the latest one she gets to go on a school trip to Paris. That one's coming out in October. 

If you never got to do these things at school, relive your best (or worst) years in Dork Diaries. I read the near entire series in lockdown and so it was like I was back at school anyway. I also listened to them in audio, but you don't get the benefit of the illustrations when you just listen. Now some teachers might think these are just fluff, eye candy books that have no literary merit at all. Well I just say to these teachers you are no fun. Nikki is our heroine facing real life situations, and who hasn't been the new girl at school and tried to fit in? Who hasn't been a dork? Who hasn't confessed in their secret diary, all the awful things they have done? And who hasn't had an annoying sister and dreamed of being an only child? (Unless you are already an only child, lucky you). Who hasn't had an awkward crush?

One day you will look back on your school years (If you have survived them) and see, that it's all part of growing up and the most things you will learn are not actually what teachers teach in the classroom. And less boys miss out, Rachel Renee Russell has also written a series for boys about one of the characters Max Crumbly. 

If you'd like to win a brand new box set of Dork Diaries, email me and let me know.  Answer this question...what dance does Nikki do when she's happy? 

Otherwise donate to the Great Kiwi Bookathon so that our Blind and Low Vision girls can enjoy these books too.