Skip to main content

All's Faire in Middle School


All's Faire in Middle School
By Victoria Jamieson
Dial Books for Young Readers, 2017. Comics. 248 p.

Imogene's family has been a part of the Renaissance Faire her entire life. This year, for the first time she is going to be an actor in the Faire, instead of just running the shop with her mom! She has also been home schooled her entire life, but she decides she wants to start 6th grade in public school, her first year of middle school. She encounters the tricky business of making friends and finding out middle school can be hard. Sometimes people who you think are your friends, really aren't.

This graphic novel is a true telling of the middle school experience. The emotions, awkwardness, and insecurities are perfectly portrayed. Imogene has to realize who the important people are in her life and who she really is. The extensive amount of artwork is incredible. The reader is brought into the life of Imogene. The description and detail of the inner workings and people involved in a Renaissance Faire is interesting. Imogene is able to endure her problems, learn some lessons and have a little fun throughout the story.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...

Review: The Amazing Generation

The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World Written by Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price  Illustrated by Cynthia Yuan Cheng New York: Rocky Pond Books, 2025. Informational. 226 pages.  In a kid-friendly adaptation of his best-selling book, The Anxious Generation , Jonathan Haidt teams up with Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone , to bring the power of good information directly to the hands of those that this issue affects most directly — kids on the cusp of getting their own smartphones. The book presents information about the drawbacks of having a smartphone and social media too soon in clear and easy-to-understand language, with eye-catching graphics and pop-outs. Throughout the book, quotes from real teens and young adults, called screen "rebels" by the authors, emphasize the points the authors are trying to make. Fictional characters are featured throughout in a graphic novel story, which further emphasizes the po...