Good Onya, Jillian James! Diary of a Would-Be Princess by Jessica Green

In our class there are groups. I call them:

The Princesses--That's Skye, Megan, Kirrily, Sarah, and Karlie. And Tegan, too.

The Rough Heads--That's just about all the boys, except Nigel. And it includes Amanda.

The Dorks--Nigel. And Vincent. Or is Vincent a Rough Head?

The Normals--The rest of the class, except one or two kids who are Loners. Most of the Normals and Princesses reckon I'm one of the Dorks. Especially since I have to sit next to Nigel. I wish I were a Princess.

Mrs. Bright gets really angry when we talk about the groups. She says we're all individuals and we shouldn't label people. I can't help that. It's tradition.

Jillian James, fith-grader (or fifth year, in Aussie-speak) is made to keep a journal by her hard-working teacher, Mrs. Bright, and in it she records the social landscape of her class as it progresses through the school year. Jillian's is a remarkably perceptive voice as she deals with the cliques and quirks of her own small universe. A dag (klutz) at sports, weak at maths (math), and a natural-born writer and observer of humanity, Jillian's journal and Mrs. Bright's perceptive handwritten remarks in it chronicle a year in which Jill finds her place in the order of things, discovering her real self within a new circle of friends, mostly boys and others who are the anti-Princesses of the class.

Identifying with her teacher, who struggles to bring together the disparate groups into a more tolerant team, Jill organizes a party for the whole class which she believes to be a disaster until the next school day, when she finds everyone is still talking about how much fun it was. Never mind that her toddler brother sat in the tub of soft drinks and her teenaged brother hung balloons with his dopey putdowns scrawled on them in all the trees, or that the pop-star-wannabe Princesses' song and dance act was a bust! Everyone agrees that it was all so funny that they'll never forget Jill's party.

As Jillian's self-image takes on new shape (and her maths grades improve), she also begins to empathize with the nerdy Nigel, the dyslexic Sam, and the anti-social Vincent. As the year progresses, the class does begin to come together, and Nigel, Sam, and Vincent also begin to shed their "traditional" personas a bit. When the rambunctious Vincent is made to replace a ball belonging to the class, he swipes one from a neighborhood shop and is arrested, but Jillian organizes a committee to write character references to the police and principal, and Vincent begins to be accepted again by the class. At year-end ceremonies, Jillian is honored with a public speaking award for her speech on the appropriately-chosen topic of procrastination and deservedly receives the grade-level citizenship award.

Diary of a Would-be Princess (Journal of Jillian James) would make a great read-aloud for an American fifth-grade class, in which the groups Jillian struggles with are all too familiar. Although the Aussie terms (footy for soccer, texta for pen) are a bit off-putting initially (a glossary translating Down Under slang into American slang is appended), the Australian setting will actually give kids in the States the little bit of distance from Jill's fifth-year social scene needed to gain some insight into their own classroom stereotypes and outcasts. Jillian's voice is so real, so genuinely honest, and so funny that everyone will be pulling for her by the end of the novel.