Dear Diary

The wild and wacky adventures of a day at school are captured in diary form by a number of involved characters, including Bubu the dog, a ladybug, a firefly, and a chair.

Gr 2-4-This hand-lettered book is a busy collection of unconventional diary entries from a girl, a chair, a spider, a firefly, a knife and fork, a dog, and a ladybug. In the opening entry, Lucy recalls her day at school, an afternoon walk in the park with her dog, and her parents' dinner party. Subsequent accounts from the various creatures and inanimate objects that she writes about give their points of view on the day's events. While the entries are imaginative and the collage illustrations eye-catching, the stories are too disjointed to present a meaningful whole. Lucy's postscript, which explains that she attended another party where all the guests were insects, does not sufficiently tie her everyday world to the book's fanciful six-legged creatures. Each entry is written on a different type of paper cluttered with quirky art. In addition, numerous relevant quotes, including one from 1838 by Charles Greville regarding the educational value of diary writing, introduce the accounts. Marissa Moss's Amelia's Notebook (Tricycle, 1995) and its sequels do a better job of demonstrating the joys of journal writing.-Jackie Hechtkopf, Rose Ruth Freudberg Memorial Library, Washington, DC

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Starting with the busy scribbles and notes that cover the graph paper inside this paper-over-board book's cover, Fanelli plunges readers into an enchanting community of committed diarists, as each describes the activities of the same day from his/her perspective. The diary entries from Lucy, Chair, Spider, Firefly, Knife and Fork, Bubu (the dog) and Ladybug appear on various kinds of paper (notebook, graph, ledger), all easily accessible, and all--in the context of this book--seem to invite doodling and other creative expression. The cover page of each diary contains a quote (the only typeset text in the book): for Lucy, "There was a little girl who had a little curl," and "You are all fair, my love; there is no spot in you" for Ladybug. The handwriting reflects the personality of each character. Knife, while discussing a dinner party, uses elegant formal script: "But we had a scare when Mrs. Fork was accidentally dropped. To my relief, Bubu came to her rescue. Unfortunately Mrs. Fork felt the disgrace frightfully." Forthright Bubu, on the other hand, describes the same event in uneven block letters: "At dinner everyone patted me and gave me cake. All I did was pick up Mrs. Fork from the ground and put her on the table." Fanelli's hand-lettered text combined with her intricate collages and freewheeling drawings create an intricate and humorous environment for the eccentric cast of characters. This volume is sure to inspire both secret and self-proclaimed diarists. Ages 7-10. (Apr.)

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.