Drama

This being my second Telgemeier book I really appreciated both the differences and similarities between it and the first volume of the babysitter's club. Because I was a bit worried about the lack of diversity in BSC, but it is just an adaption so I wasn't sure if it just had to do with the source material or if Telgemeier and/or Scholastic wasn't interested in presenting progressive ideas. It's been a long time since I've perused any of their catalogs and I'm a bit suspicious about these sorts of things - one need only read some of the reviews of this book to tell why.

Being someone myself who struggled with feeling caught between tomboyhood and girldome in middle and high school, I really appreciated the way in which Callie seems to straddle both worlds well. Because throughout most of the comic she doesn't seem all that preoccupied with looking cute, but she has no problems with dressing up for the eighth grade formal either. Her feelings about boys might result in more then a little drama, but it's still something she's largely comfortable with.

And as I mentioned in the opening paragraph, I also really appreciated that Telgemeier turned the diversity level up a notch or two to general great affect. There are certainly things that could probably be improved upon, but as far as entertaining elementary school kids go I think it balances the idea of teaching and entertaining pretty well.

I didn't appreciate the fact that the main villain is a stuck up popular girl, that still seems like a hurtful easy out to me but I'm not sure what to outline as the solution yet so I'll leave it at that.

Not preachy, but certainly idealistic, Telgemeier shows readers a world that could be if only we could actually accept people that are different from us (and aren't popular?). Like in many books, the children are just a little more precocious for their age then is necessarily realistic, but you get that with almost every single children's book ever. Considering no parental units died and they didn't chase down any murderers this (for all its utopian aspirations) is more realistic then most. The story moves along at a rather fast clip most of the time, but that seems to be fairly common in children's books so I won't really complain.

The art style remains largely the same, which is fine. I'm not sure what could make it better suited to the particular genre that Telgemeier seems to be drawn to. The characters are decidedly cartoony, but also average. The page layouts are varied and the framing moves well. Overall another decidedly solid read considering I am pretty far removed from the target audience.