AMELIA'S NOTEBOOK

Amelia is a bit smug and precocious, but then so are some of our favorite nine-year-olds. Her story is told in her own words, pictures, and handwriting in her own composition notebook (the design of the book supports this pretext). What she has to say is funny if unremarkable, but most importantly, she sounds like a real kid. Readers meet her as she moves to a new city, and follow her through her first days in a strange school with new friends. If this were an adult book, it would be labelled ``metafiction'' (or some other hip term that eventually means ``experimental''). Amelia scribbles notes in her margins about the writing process, revealing something interesting about creativity. Why not simply publish a real child's notebook? It's Moss's awareness of her material that allows her to thrust a narrative thread through the patchwork of doodles, postcards, memorabilia, and other icons of children's culture. The informality of the presentation may help demystify the writing process for others; Amelia's comments on the copyright page and elsewhere will certainly make them laugh. This is a carefully coordinated story that only seems like haphazard scribbling. (Picture book. 7+)