Thursday, 3 May 2012

Polly Price's Totally Secret Diary: On Stage in America by Dee Shulman (Children's, 9 years +)

 February 2012, Red Fox
136 pages, Paperback
Review copy

Themes: being an actor's daughter, bratty child actors, manners (both absent and good), theatre life, more drama off than on the stage, seriously unexpected story twists, lots of humour, a tissue needed for laughing so much

Summary from Random House Children's Publishing

Meet Polly Price, owner of the world's most embarrassing mother: actress and all-round airhead Arabella Diamonte. Who has just been cast in a touring production of a new play, meaning Polly is heading to San Francisco for what may well turn out to be the craziest summer holiday of her life... Read Polly's wonderfully funny diary as she records the mishaps and mayhem backstage, before all of a sudden the spotlight is on her!

 
Nayuleska's thoughts
I picked this as my next read because I'd read several heavy going books and needed something light. I got what I wanted, and then some. Polly's mother is quite a character - it's amazing Polly isn't like the bratty child actors. What really made Polly's story awesome were the illustrations. There were different styles to the page numbers, whatever Polly wrote on is on the page (lines for a noteboard, papertowel for when she uses the bathroom as a sanctuary), there are comic strip pages, and pages where the handwriting is all over the place due to how Polly wrote it. The realisitc handwriting is another reason why this gets 10/10 from me.

You can find out more on Dee's website 

Suggested read

For more drama from a child less like Polly and more like the bratty child actors, check out Bathsheba's life in Chips, Beans, and Limousines: The Fantastic Diary of Bathsheba Clarice De Trop by Leila Rasheed

No comments: