By Rachel Renée Russell
Nikki's diary about surviving a posh new school on a scholarship, packed with her own cartoons and full-blown meltdowns.
Nikki Maxwell just started at a fancy private school, there on a scholarship her parents never mentioned to anyone, and she's sure the whole place can tell she doesn't belong. So she vents to her diary: the boy she's too nervous to talk to, the popular girl who seems to live to make her miserable, and the one thing she's genuinely great at, which is drawing.
It's the Diary of a Wimpy Kid setup with a girl at the center, and the doodles and scribbled notes break up every page so it never turns into a wall of text. The diary voice reads like a real eleven-year-old griping about her day. If your child wants the cartoon-diary format but wants a narrator worrying about the same friendship and fitting-in stuff they worry about, this is the one.