This instalment lifts Nikki Maxwell out of her ordinary school week and sets her down in a fairy-tale world where the same rivalries wear different costumes.
The fairy-tale framing lets the series play with familiar stories while keeping its own cast and its own concerns about friendship, popularity and being noticed for the wrong reasons. Presentation stays the same: dated diary entries, hand-drawn figures, speech bubbles and lists scattered between paragraphs. The mix of pictures and short passages keeps the pace quick even across 320 pages, which helps readers who find dense text tiring.
What distinguishes this copy:
• A fairy-tale storyline layered over the usual school setting
• Sketch-filled pages that break up the text at short intervals
• A 320-page paperback from Simon and Schuster Children's Books
• Suggested for readers of nine years and above
A fit for children who like humour, drawing and diary fiction, and for gift shopping at Boipoka.