Monday, April 11, 2011

Mahvelous Middle Grade Monday - Fashionista Edition

The Time-Traveling Fashionista

The Time-Traveling Fashionista, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in Apr 2011
Author: Bianca Tuertsky
Illustrator: Sandra Suy

Product description:
Louise Lambert has always dreamed of movie starlets and exquisite gowns and longs for the day when she can fill the closet of her normal suburban home with stylish treasures. But when she receives a mysterious invitation to a vintage fashion sale in the mail, her once painfully average life is magically transformed into a time-travel adventure.

It is Marvelous Middle Grade Monday, and I couldn't resist highlighting this delightful, or as Louise learns to say when she travels back in time, simply mahvelous, debut novel by Bianca Tuertsky. It is listed as young adult, but the heroine is twelve and I think girls from nine and up will enjoy this. Released this week, there is still time for you to be the first to read (or introduce to your favorite middle grade/tween/teen girl) this fun and fashionable story.

Louise loves vintage fashions, and those tweens and teens who share her fascination will adore the twenty-five luxurious color illustrations of the glamorous dresses and clothing of the early 1900s, created by the talented Sandra Suy. Those of us who are less taken with fashion will still enjoy Louise and how she deals with her sudden lurch from ulta-ordinary shy twelve year-old with frizzy hair and braces to glamorous seventeen year-old actress, Alice Baxter.

The story is fun and exciting, and has appeal on different levels for those obsessed with fashion and history, as well as those who simply like a girl with dreams. The fixation on fashion is a bit hard to take in the first few pages if you aren't interested in such things, but anybody who will pick up a book called The Time-Traveling Fashionista probably doesn't fall in that category. The biggest regret most readers will have is that they have to wait another year before the next Time-Traveling Fashionista book is released.

Four stars out of five.

Find on Amazon.com
Find on Amazon.ca
Find on Amazon.co.uk (to be released in May)

Marvelous Middle Grade Monday was started by Shannon Whitney Messenger. She, and others frequent MMGM posters are:

Shannon Whitney Messenger at Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe
Joanne Fritz at My Brain on Books
Shannon O'Donnell at Book Dreaming
Myrna Foster at Night Writer
Sherrie Petersen at Write About Now
Aly Beecher at Kid Lit Frenzy
Brooke Favero at somewhere in the middle

If you watch those blogs today, as well as Shannon's blog, you are likely to find other great middle grade book recommendations.

6 comments:

  1. I just read about this book last week and thought it sounded adorable! The kind of book that makes me wish I had a daughter - oh well. Guess I'll just have to read it myself!

    -Vicki

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  2. Oh, I am going to have to check this one out! Thanks, Ben. :-)

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  3. This one sounds "simply mahvelous." Thanks for the great review!

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  4. What a great cover! Thanks for highlighting this one.

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  5. Weird that it's listed as a YA! It does sound great. Thanks!

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  6. My question to my students has always been "What would you WEAR if you were time traveling?" Maybe this will answer that question.

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