Julia Jones – My Worst Day Ever! By Katrina Kahler
My Worst Day Ever! Is one of a series of books aimed at 9-12 year old girls. At the time of downloading, it was at number 2 in the Kindle kids chart and had rave reviews from delighted tweens.
The story begins by introducing Julia Jones – whose diary we are reading. She is excitedly planning dance routines for the end of term musical when a new student comes to the school and she is assigned to look after her for the day. The new student turns out to be a fantastic dancer and begins to take over the show. Julia tries to be very adult about this and carries on, but it seems increasingly likely that Sara is trying to sabotage her. The day of the show arrives and Julia is not feeling well, and her costume mysteriously disappears. The show ends with her vomiting spectacularly over the stage.
This book is clearly very popular and is being downloaded and read by many children, but it is not all that well written. The narrative is awkward and completely unconvincing as the voice of a pre-teen girl – sentences like 'At that very moment, I was overcome with a sudden rush of nausea and unable to stop the convulsion, I vomited all over the stage.' and 'We decided to get Sara to demonstrate and everyone was concentrating quite intensely as some of the interchanges were very tricky.' particularly stood out, but the text was littered with similar language which made it very clear that the speaker is very much an adult. The text also uses a clunky mixture of American and standard English, which leaves the reader confused about where the story is set. This could be intentional, to allow the setting to remain ambiguous, but it appears to be more a lack of attention to detail than an attempt to make the story more relatable.
All in all, the storyline is perfectly reasonable and would quite obviously appeal to girls aged eight plus. The language is more challenging than would be expected had it actually been written in the voice of a ten year old, which would provide opportunities for more advanced readers to stretch themselves, but teachers should be aware of the discrepancies in English when recommending this book to children.
My Worst Day Ever! Is one of a series of books aimed at 9-12 year old girls. At the time of downloading, it was at number 2 in the Kindle kids chart and had rave reviews from delighted tweens.
The story begins by introducing Julia Jones – whose diary we are reading. She is excitedly planning dance routines for the end of term musical when a new student comes to the school and she is assigned to look after her for the day. The new student turns out to be a fantastic dancer and begins to take over the show. Julia tries to be very adult about this and carries on, but it seems increasingly likely that Sara is trying to sabotage her. The day of the show arrives and Julia is not feeling well, and her costume mysteriously disappears. The show ends with her vomiting spectacularly over the stage.
This book is clearly very popular and is being downloaded and read by many children, but it is not all that well written. The narrative is awkward and completely unconvincing as the voice of a pre-teen girl – sentences like 'At that very moment, I was overcome with a sudden rush of nausea and unable to stop the convulsion, I vomited all over the stage.' and 'We decided to get Sara to demonstrate and everyone was concentrating quite intensely as some of the interchanges were very tricky.' particularly stood out, but the text was littered with similar language which made it very clear that the speaker is very much an adult. The text also uses a clunky mixture of American and standard English, which leaves the reader confused about where the story is set. This could be intentional, to allow the setting to remain ambiguous, but it appears to be more a lack of attention to detail than an attempt to make the story more relatable.
All in all, the storyline is perfectly reasonable and would quite obviously appeal to girls aged eight plus. The language is more challenging than would be expected had it actually been written in the voice of a ten year old, which would provide opportunities for more advanced readers to stretch themselves, but teachers should be aware of the discrepancies in English when recommending this book to children.