Book: I, Lorelei by Yeardley Smith

Pages/Format: 339/Hardcover

My Thoughts: This book was okay.  It’s about 11-year-old Lorelei, who writes a journal to her cat who died.  She chronicles her life as a 6th grader so that he knows what’s going on in her life.

I thought it looked interesting when I was at the library.  I liked how Smith used journal entries to tell the story, and the fact that the journal was written to her cat made it more interesting and original.  And the fact that she was writing to her cat made it feel a lot more personal.  Lorelei included a horoscope or a word-of-the-day too, which was different and slightly unexpected. 

A few parts made me smile, and a few times I even felt sad for Lorelei.  I found my attention wandering a few times, getting bored with the story. 

I found it hard to relate to at times, but that’s probably because it’s targeted to kids, and I’m not the target audience, but it was still enjoyable, and held my interest long enough to get through it.  I’d definitely recommend it for kids.

Rating: 3 out of 5.  I liked the format, and found myself wanting to know what was going on in Lorelei’s life.  Writing an entire novel in letters or as journal entries is something I definitely want to doing sometime, but nothing I’ve really come up with would work well with that.