Am I the Princess or the Frog?

Dear Dumb Diary #3

by Jim Benton

Jamie is crushing on Hudson. Someone too-gross-to-be- named is crushing on Jamie. And Hudson is crushing on . . . Princess Turd of Turdsylvania (a.k.a. The Prettiest Girl in the World). Middle school may be grim, but it's no fairy tale. And crazy doesn't even begin to cover it.

"Dear Dumb Diary,
I got another poem today from You-Know-Who
'She is the fairest blossom, true,
She blooms in any weather.
But I must love her from afar.
We'll never be together.'

Signed,
M.P.

Can you believe the pain he's in? His suffering? The crushing heartache he endures every time he sees me? Gosh, it just makes me so happy "

Genres: Childrens, Fiction, Middle Grade, Humor, Realistic Fiction, Comedy, Contemporary

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Benton began his career in a custom design t-shirt shop where he started designing his own characters. At the same time, Jim did illustrations and artwork for magazines and newspapers. People magazine named him "the most visible cartoonist in America" .

Benton also created greeting cards and worked in the magazine and publishing industry. In 1998, his SpyDogs characters became an animated series, The Secret Files of the Spy Dogs, that aired on Fox Kids. Licensing his own creations brought them widespread attention on products, such as It's Happy Bunny, The Misters, Just Jimmy and more.

Benton currently lives in Michigan, where he operates out of his own studio.

Reviews

[Darla]

Dear Goodreads Friends,
Some days you are the frog and other days you are the princess. Truthfully, you can be both on the same day to different people. Jamie is back with her snarky diary entries and her middle school dilemmas. When Mrs. Bruntford has to take sick leave after an unfortunate encounter with the cafeteria meatloaf, a handsome sub takes her place. His name is Mr. Prince. Jamie is crushing on him immediately. Her diagram comparing Mr. Prince to Hudson Rivers is a hoot. There is an ongoing debate about whether ZONE SHAMPOOING is a thing. Isabella and Jamie disagree about the direction of an art project, Jamie has to pair up with Angeline, and there is so much more in this series entry. Mom's meatloaf may even come in handy. You will have to read Jamie's diary to find out.
See you in Book #4.
Darla

[Jaliesa]

This book is about a girl named Jamie Kelly and she thinks she is not pretty enough to have a boyfriend. And she is jealous of this girl named Angeline. Jamie thinks she is really mean to everybody but she is not even mean to anybody. The problem in the story is that she is always trying to make Angeline life bad.
The main character of the story is Jamie Kelly, Angeline. The setting of the story is Jamie’s bedroom and their school. I like this book because it is like a real middle school life. And it is what some people go through at our school. I would recommend this to girls that like funny middle school books. I would recommend it to girls because they mostly talk about girls stuff. I don’t think boys would want to listen about doing hair and nail, and who the girls think are cute and who they would want to go out with in the dreams. That is what I think about this book and why I liked the book so much.

[izzy of the hollow †]

彡 re-read 彡

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ i read this when i was like 8 or smth & just realised it was rlly short & over 100 pgs so it counts for the YA Readers House reading challenge XD. i read it in like 20 mins 😂🤌🤌

[Andrea Giselle]

muy divertido

[Book_lover12345]

This is a great book! You should read it, if you didn't.

Jamie got a crush on Mr. Prince, a man that is filling in for miss Bruntford. A few days passed, Jamie found a note inside her locker. She read it, and knew that Mr. Prince wrote this, because it says M.P. She gets a letter each day. Hudson liked Jamie, but Jamie didn't care..... She was in love with Mr. Prince. Jamie tries to get rid of Stinker, her pet away because Isabella has to get photos of people and their animals for her project. She tries so hard. But then one day, he goes outside and walk down the sidewalk slowly. Jamie watched him walk all the way out of sight. When Jamie goes to Isabella's house, and found a kitten on her front yard and gives it Isabella and told her to give it back to her neighbours. The next few days, she sees two, and gave it to Isabella. After a few days, Jamie asked if the neighbours got their kittens back and if the kittens were happy now. She said it had come to her in a flash in art class that nobody had an uglier pet than I do. Except her. Isabella has a turtle. So she used her powers of persuasion on her dad to make him take her to the mall to get a kitten. But Isabella says that in as little as a week, kitten cuteness starts to fade. So she told her dad that the kitten ran away and cried and cried until he took her to get a new one. At the end, Jamie tries to figure out if she's the princess or the frog, she was the frog for mr. Prince, but he was the prince for Miss Anderson. She was the frog for Hudson. Then the princess, and then the frog again. So it looks like she's both the princess and the frog. Later on, her doorbell rang, she found a note on her porch and then she knew that she really was the princess. She was the princess for mike pinsetti. The she read the poem again and found behind your big brown eyes.she doesn't have brown eyes. Neither her family. Then she flipped the envelope over and found out it was addressed to Stinker.

( sorry, for the spoiler )

I will read the fourth book, never do anything, ever.

This book is by Jim Benton. - book_lover12345

[John Naylor]

I haven't read the previous books in this series. I might one day.

This is an easy to read book with as much humour in its illustrations. It mentions fairy tales and it shares a similar idea of morality with some of them. In a way that is far less violent than fairy tales originally were.

The book is hard to dislike. It is also not one I loved at any point. The main character just lacked a likeability that would have helped. She complains too much and although embarrassment is overplayed in her age group it isn't something that raises the stakes in this book.

This series is a well loved and popular one. It is easy to see why based on this book. For me, it just needed something more to make this a great book. I would recommend the series based on it. I wouldn't highly recommend the series.

[Valeria]

In my opinion Dear Dumb Diary Am I the Princess or The Frog written by Jim Benton is the best book ever in the whole wide world so I am giving it 5 stars . I recommend this book so other 4th graders read this book and enjoy it just like me.

I enjoy this book because it is entertaining. It is entertaining because of the pictures drawn. In her diary Jamie draws herself. My favorite drawing was when she drew herself writing in her diary. In her diary she wrote how enemy Angelina was mean to her.

Another reason I like this book is because I also understand how Jamie is feeling . Jamie feels annoyed because the boys at Angelina’s table took her diary. This can happen in real life! You can understand the character’s feeling and when you're reading the book you're gonna understand how she’s feeling too!

Another reason i recommend this book because i learned a lesson. I learned you have to respect other people's diaries and someone who you not get along with may actually turn out to be someone special in your life. There is something juicy that Angelina knows that will help her get along with Jamie.

Now you know way i'm giving this book 5 stars and I want you to read this awesome book too!!!!!

[Книжни Криле]

Ако имате сестра, която си води дневник, то обзалагам се, че тайно ровите из нещата й и се опитвате да се доберете до секретните й записки! Е, хайде, пред нас можете да си признаете. Все пак... и ние си падаме по четенето на дневници. И особено много ни харесва този на Джейми Кели! Същият онзи, към когото тя се обръща със „Скъпо тъпо дневниче”. Прочетете ревюто на "Книжни Криле":

https://knijnikrile.wordpress.com/201...

[Robyn]

ps:I tried to secretly sniff Angeline from two sides today to see if she really is Zone Shampooing. I couldn't tell a difference. I don't think there is such a thing.

pps: There is, however, a way to creep somebody out by trying to smell both sides of their head.

Other ways I have creeped people out in the past:
Tried to casually peer up Uncle's nose.
Tasted comb.
Was spotted practicing kissing an arm.

[Anastasia]

This book is really funny, along with the other books in the series. The drawings are hilarious and it is really fun to see how this middle schooler thinks about everything and how she works. These books are different than other books I have read, and I like that. The books have many diffeerent characters and settings with crazy, insane events and overall I loved them.

[max theodore]

i like that each of the first three books so far ends with jamie reconciling with her dog... stinker you have suffered more than jesus christ i think. jamie gay moment tracker: the reveal that jamie and angeline were best friends in kindergarten and close enough to give each other pictures of themselves. which they both kept all this time.

[alysssssssa :]]

this is the third book in the dear dumb diary series. i enjoy all of Jim Benton's books so much. He makes me want to read his books over and over again! Even though they are kids / tween books, i enjoy them and i would recommend them to other people. This book continues Jamie Kelly's interesting but boring life with her bestfriend isabella and their enemy Angeline. In the third book it is all about the poems jamie recieves. and the mystery to find out who he is because shes in love!

[Gracie]

yes i am logging and reviewing this book written for 8 year olds. i dont care. it’s genuinely funny. i read it on my lunch break and laughed out loud. i read these so much in elementary school that my copies are falling apart. i remember asking for them at the library and buying them at book fairs. best children’s series, blows that wimpy kid out of the water. truly generational - i tip my hat you you jim.

[Enos]

Ha ha ha, I hate to admit it... but I came across this book as I was babysitting. Yes, I know it's for a preteen audience, but my first grade niece read it and I read it.. and it made me laugh till my stomach hurt.

[Lisa]

I can see the kid-appeal of these slight "diary" books, especially for fans of the Wimpy Kid. This one was mildly humorous, but I don't feel the need to read anymore in the series!

[Monika Kronika]

Ani tretí diel nezaostáva za predošlými. Vtipné a dobré. Maximálna spokojnosť!

[Sabina]

I cannot tell you how many times I had to put down the book to get all my laughter out. Jamie really gets herself into ridiculous predicaments!

[Laura Maxwell]

Super cute and fun and best of all, quick reads if you're trying to reach your yearly goal!

[Raquel]

El mejor

[Julia Ataya]

SOOO FUNNYYY

[Chaitra]

I really felt bad for the way she treats Stinker.. 😭😭😭😭

[maria]

no wonder everybody in the 2000s had issues

[Liz Towery]

My 10 year old loves the books, but reading them with her has me cringing the whole time. Full of a lot of unhealthy stereotypes, fat phobia, and just not great things.

[Courtney Umlauf]

I'd like to say I thought as much of this book as I do of Jim Benton's Franny K. Stein series. Those books manage to entertain both adults and children without relying on bratty kids and dumb adult characters to get laughs. Am I the Princess or the Frog? doesn't go to the extremes that I've read in some other books (ahem, Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life) but I was still a little disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high. Franny K. Stein was great precisely because it managed to be hilarious without Franny being totally embarrassed by her family, worrying about if she has perfect hair or what kind of love notes the eighth cutest boy in her class may or may not have left in her locker.

I'm probably making it sound worse than I really thought it was. I still loved the writing; Benton uses great vocabulary and his sentences are cleverly written. And I still found it to be entertaining.

'...hurry up, because my mom is here and I don't want her to see them, because (Isabella was really groping for an explanation here) because....my...mom...has...a...real...soft...spot...for...baby...animals.'

Isabella's mom is really nice and everything, but a soft spot for baby animals? I've seen her pound veal like it owed her money.

But I felt like it could have been just as funny without the middle school girl drama. I would still recommend it to kids, especially reluctant readers. In my opinion, it's much better than the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, the writing is more sophisticated. But I think if a kid enjoys those books they'll get hooked on these as well. I give it a 3.5 overall.

[Edward Creter]

Jamie Kelly returns as the world's funniest mean girl (or is it the meanest funny girl) in kids-lit history. She still has a passionate dislike for the smokin' 13-year-old Angeline (I say somkin' to be slightly sarcastic, since no teenage girl should be sexed up like Miley or Selena. It's too young!!!) Now her best bud in class is challenging her to a duel by coming up with the cutest animal pet photo for an art project, and yes, it will have to include (somehow) her devoted nemesis beagle Stinker, who's pudgy and cute and totally irresistable...unless you're Jamie Kelly of course! Jamie has tried over and over to lose that poor dog, even going so far as to tie his doggy toy to the back bumper of Dad's car so he'll chase himself outa the house. I love that dog. Stinker is the lovable center of the Dear Dumb Diary Universe and a sheer joy. I've never giggled so freely in a long time. Cute dogs in kids books will do that to me. Jamie also has to contend with an unrequited crush on Mr. Prince, her fave teacher, and has to do a report on The Princess and the Frog to display her romantic (if odd and misplaced) feelings for a guy named for a certain "Former" Artist in purple. Odd but enjoyable and funny slice of life in middle school that doesn't go over the top with the proverbial romantic scene which may turn off kids and grown-ups. Who knows? You may find it quite "ribbiting"! (LOL)

[Megan]

Seriously funny.

Told in an epistolary format, Jamie Kelly writes about her day to day life as a middle schooler. Between her truly ugly dog, her mom's terrible cooking, the school snob, and a few mysterious love letters, Jamie's life is never dull.

With hilarious illustrations, quick wit, and characters with huge personalities, Benton knocks this one out of the park.

I would recommend this story for 3-5th graders who enjoy realistic fiction.

[Colca]

All the Dear Dumb Diary books are really good for people from non-English-speaking countries learning the language. On the other hand I would say about it the same thing I said about the Diary of a Wimpy Kid - it's inappropriate for children under the age of eight because it teaches them that school is something really wrong and boring and some people are just bad - it's never like that!

[Shauna]

Okay, I'll admit it, I love this series of books. It's like eating twinkies - you don't do it all the time, but I totally enjoy it when I do. Nothing deep or meaningful (obviously), but just absolutely hilarious. This, to me, is the equivalent of watching Saturday Night Live.

[Katie]

Although not as funny as the others, this one is still hilarious. You might not find the plot line of any of these books to be elaborate or anything like that, but come on! You can read it in an hour and it's really worth it!

[Cami]

I feel with all of these series the same. They are stupid. They are strange. They are crude, and yet they hold my attention. I feel theses books are fairly good. I read them in the 5th grade and i read each of them in a day!