Review: Karen's School Picture by Ann M Martin and Katy Farina

The Baby-Sitters Little Sister Graphic Novel adaptions are still going strong. Graphix/Scholastic are up to the fifth book in the series now, and there is absolutely no hint that this is going to be the last one. And it's no wonder. They've managed to update Karen's School Picture--quite possibly the most outdated book in the series--and turn it into something special.

As the title suggests, school picture day is coming up at Stoneybrook Academy. That's a pretty big deal when you're six years old, and Karen reacts accordingly. She's keen to pick an outfit and she and her best friend at the little house Nancy Dawes are preparing their winning, movie star smiles. The only trouble is, Karen has been getting a lot of headaches lately, and she's having trouble with her vision. And then it turns out ... (dramatic pause ...) Karen is having a stroke.

No, not really. (The symptoms are somewhat dramatic though, as often tends to be the case in Ann M Martin's work.) Karen needs glasses. She's somewhat resentful of the fact, but calms down a little when she finds a pair of pretty pink frames. The class teacher and her friends compliment her on her new eyewear. Then a boy in her class starts teasing her about her glasses because, quite frankly, Ricky Torres is a tool. Anyway, Karen begins to feel insecure about her glasses thanks to all of the bullying, and she and Ricky end up learning some important life lessons along the way.

What I really appreciated about this one was the way that the story was updated. In the original, Karen had to wear two pairs of glasses, because either bifocals weren't a thing back in the 1980s or because Ann M Martin had something of a flair for the dramatic. There is also no suggestion that Ricky is bullying Karen because he secretly likes her, which was, sadly, a theme in the original series that generations of girls (including myself,) could have done without. (Remember how Karen and Ricky eventually got 'married' in the playground?)

Overall, this is a fun read for kids and a cute nostalgia trip for those of us who remember the originals.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more