Saturday, 28 May 2011

Ally's World: Butterflies, Bullies and Bad, Bad Habits by Karen McCombie

Rowan's been acting strange (well, OK more strange than usual). One minute she's crying over who-knows-what, and the next she's tripping into the house with all this new stuff (which has to come from the shopping fairy, since I know she's got zero money). Then there's the graffiti at school: "Rowan Love is a muppet" (and I don't think it's meant in a friendly, Kermit-is-cool kind of way). Just what is going on with my sister? 

Review
Ally's got two older sisters, Rowan and Linn and a little brother called Tor. She lives with her Grandma and Dad since her mum passed away. Life isn't easy but it's starts to get really complicated when Rowan starts acting weirder than she already is. Something's going on and Ally deperately wants to find out what it is. Especially after what she finds scrawled on the back of a cubicle door...

An extract from the book
Just then, my eyes settled on something scribbled on the back of the cubicle door. It was right at the end of this really boring, long piece of graffiti that's been going on for a couple of months; graffiti that had started out with someone writing "Ellie F is a total muppet", then someone underneath added "I know who you are and YOU are the muppet!", then in completely different handwriting, there was "No, you are the muppet, you big MUPPET!", and it went on and on and on like that.
But now there was a new addition to the slagging.
Who's getting it this time? I wondered, bending forward to make out the red-penned scrawl.
Then I wished I hadn't bothered.
"The biggest muppit at Pallace Gates", wrote someone who couldn't write, "is Rowen Love".
Unless a new girl with a ridiculously similar name - give or take the odd vowel - had started at our school, then it looked like my sister had just been voted this week's muppet.
Uh-oh...

I would rate this book four stars as I liked the way it intrigued you to find out exactly what was happening with Rowan and it was a humorous storyline.