Gownley, Jimmy. Amelia Rules!: The Tweenage Guide to Not Being Unpopular. New York: Atheneum, 2010. ISBN: 9781416986089
Author / Illustrator Website: http://www.ameliarules.com/home.html
Media: Pen and Ink
Use of Allusion: (p. 79) “When I was a kid, I made Ferris Bueller look like Ann Lee Sheridan,” Amelia’s mother makes a reference to a movie popular when she was a teenager.
Use of Onomatopoeia: (p. 100) “Foosh! Woosh! Clang! Boing!”
Special Notation: Graphic Novel, 2010 Copyright Date
Annotation: Amelia and her best friend Rhonda fear that they are dangerously close to being unpopular. The two tweens consult a ridiculous guidebook and find themselves in all sorts of misadventures that certainly don’t help their popularity.
Personal Reaction: In this Amelia Rules book, author Jimmy Gownley explores the importance of popularity to tweens. Amelia and her best friend Rhonda are feeling insecure about their social status at school after Joan transfers to their school and ask to be introduced to the popular kids. A series of hilarious missteps ensues as Amelia and Rhonda follow a guidebook’s woefully bad advice. One character tries out creating a popular catch phrase, space monkeys, to no avail. In another scene, a group of kids mercilessly tease Amelia and Rhonda after a class presentation in which the two girls dress like teens from the future (“nice space suit! Where’d you get it? Geeks ‘R’ us!?”). Readers in the midst of their tween years will relate to Amelia and Rhonda as the two friends change their looks, try out for cheerleading and in the end, figure out that working so hard not to be unpopular is overrated. Amelia is a sweetheart of a character with a lot of attitude that readers ages 10-13 will identify with (as well as anyone over the age of 13 brave enough to look back at their awkward years). Gownley’s drawings and dialogue are fresh and funny.
