Dear Reader

Not a bookselling site - just a place where I can chat about what I've been reading lately.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Baffling publishing decision

I'm pretty baffled by Meg Cabot's new children's book, From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess. It's a continuation of the Princess Diaries series, and by "continuation", I mean something less positive than that sounds.
Don't get me wrong. I like Meg Cabot's body of work, taken as a whole. But I didn't find that Olivia's voice rang true to me - specifically, that Olivia is mixed-race, and that's only brought up a couple of times. She doesn't seem to have an identity as a girl of color. Mia's not really ringing true to me, either, which is more problematic because surely Cabot should be able to write Mia by now? I guess she's out of practice. I'm glad Feiwel & Friends brought out another Princess Diaries book, but I begin to worry that F&F are making too much of a specialty out of bringing back old series. (See also: Long May She Reign by Ellen Emerson White, though I appreciated that book far more than I did this book by Cabot.)
But why bring back the Princess Diaries at all?