Dork Diaries
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Dork Diaries is a children's book series written and illustrated by Rachel Renée Russell. The series, written in a diary format, uses drawings, doodles, and comic strips to chronicle the daily life of its 14-year-old protagonist, Nikki Maxwell.
Over 5 million copies of the Dork Diaries books are in print in the United States, and publishing rights have been sold in 32 countries with translation into 38 different languages.
List of Books
- Tales of a Not-so-Fabulous Life (2009)
- Tales of a Not-so-Popular Party Girl (2010)
- Tales of a Not-so-Talented Pop Star (2011)
- Tales from a Not-so-Graceful Ice Princess (2012)
- Tales from a Not-so-Smart Miss Know-It-All (2012)
- Tales from a Not-so-Happy Heartbreaker (2013)
- Tales from a Not-So-Glam TV Star (2014)
- Tales from a Not-So-Happily Ever After (2014)
- Tales from a Not-So-Dorky Drama Queen (2015)
- Tales from a Not-so-Perfect Pet Sitter (2015)
- Tales from a Not-so-Friendly Frenemy (2016)
- Tales from a Not-so-Secret Crush Catastrophe (2018)
- Tales from a Not-so-Happy Birthday (2018)
- Tales from a Not-so-Best Friend Forever (2019)
- Tales from a Not-so-Posh Paris Adventure (2023)
Plot
The books follow the misadventures of Nikki Maxwell, a slightly bratty, unpopular and shallow but still well-meaning and likable fourteen-year-old girl. The story begins when Nikki's family moves because of her father's job, and Nikki is transferred to Westchester Country Day, a private school that is much too fancy for Nikki's tastes. There, she meets her rival Mackenzie Hollister (the mean popular girl), Chloe Garcia and Zoey Franklin (unpopular but awesome new friends), and Brandon Roberts (Nikki's crush, Mackenzie's crush, and overall nice guy).
Why They're Considered Dorky
- For starters, the books often follow the same plot line: the protagonist, Nikki Maxwell fights with her rival, Mackenzie Hollister, gets mad at her younger sister Brianna because she's not as "perfect" as her, and obsesses over her crush, Brandon Roberts, which can get repetitive and uninteresting after a while.
- Most of the characters reinforce cliched stereotypes, such as: the insecure teenage female main character, the mean popular girls, the annoying younger sibling, the embarrassing parents, the dorky good friends, and the one nice guy.
- The main character, Nikki, is a selfish jerk who doesn't even try to put herself in other people's shoes. She also has an unhealthy obsession with writing bad things about people she doesn't like in her diary. Whenever a new problem emerges, she complains about it in her diary. She has never learned in even one of the books that writing in her diary won't solve all of her problems.
- Speaking of Mackenzie, she is a very unlikable and cliched main antagonist. She is a girl who claims to be a CCP (cute, cool and popular) socialite, but she goes out her way making everything and everyone miserable. She bullies Nikki all the time, especially ever since she was a new student at Westchester Country Day School, and she didn't even get to know her first. As the books progressed, she's become a lot more cruel and does more bad things to make Nikki miserable. She hits Nikki with a dodgeball, makes her faint, get detention, accuses Nikki of putting a bug in her hair and making a video of it, steals her diary, and even ignores her while she was drowning. Then she convinces her parents to move her to a different school, and cyberbullies herself online.
- Brandon, the boy whom Nikki obsesses with throughout the entire series, is a huge waste of her time. Even though he's cute and nice, he's actually a one-dimensional person who doesn't have much personality. He never listens to anyone, he assumes that he knows everything and he's always making people feel guilty. The way Nikki obsesses over him is very weird, and it gets kind of annoying as the series goes on.
- The dialogue often overuses certain words or phrases in an attempt to be hip-with-the-kids by using words such as "OMG", "dork", and "SQUEE!", which can be really annoying.
- Every book has a "Tales from a Not-so-" line along with it, which can get repetitive and annoying but tries to make it unlucky.
- One of the more recent books was trying too hard to remain "hip" and "trendy" by adding a reference to the Fortnite Dance Challenge videos. It also had an illustration of some characters dabbing.
- The series stereotypes tween and teenage girls as girly girls who only care about having a boyfriend, makeup, stylish clothes, gossiping, not being popular and being ones who start the drama.
- Nikki and her two friends, Chloe Garcia and Zoeysha "Zoey" Franklin, are also very stereotypical girly characters who only care about what they look like or how popular they are. We never see them play sports, try out for clubs, or do anything along the tomboy lines, nor there's is a single tomboy character. All the problems they have either revolve around being "single" or really shallow and stereotypical "girly girl" problems, like not having nice enough clothes and dealing with mean girls like Mackenzie.
- The girls have an unhealthy obsession with makeup, clothes, and missing class.
- The series provides very unrealistic expectations for kids and teenagers. In the books, the main characters are often disrespectful to their parents, realize that school doesn't matter, or think that they're better than everyone else and pretend to be people whom they're not.
- This series has some pretty bad morals, such as:
- Bullying
- Starting drama
- Not being yourself
- Gossiping
- Disrespecting your parents
- Being irresponsible
- Being a jerk or brat
- Being ungrateful
- Thinking school isn't important
- The books have very poorly written and unfunny jokes that try very hard to be funny but fail.
- Most of the books have capital, cliché similes and metaphors thrown about.
- The motto of Dork Diaries is "Let your inner dork shine", which probably means you should accept yourself for who you are and not let anyone change you. However, this message seems too hypocritical, since Nikki and her friends act like spoiled, whiny, selfish and bratty jerks who don't accept themselves for who they are.
- The "accept yourself" motto is very clichéd, since it has been used many times.
- All characters in this series are one-dimensional, flat, stereotypical, and static characters, who still haven't gone through any character development.
- It has a spin-off called The Misadventures of Max Crumbly, which does have the same tropes and clichés but is worse than the original series. It is an exact clone of this series, except with a boy. All the “popular” and “crush” topics appear there too. It’s to the point it doesn’t need another page!
Redeeming Qualities
- The anime-esque illustrations are somewhat beautiful to look at.
- Chloe and Zoey are very supportive to Nikki. They're also cautious when they see her behaving differently, and protective when things get dicey.
- The brand mentions and focus on consumerism have been toned down greatly in some of the more recent books, and they now make up and/or use their own brands for scene-setting.
- Despite being a spoiled brat, Nikki does love her family and sometimes does stand up to Mackenzie when she's bullying her and acts supportive towards her loved ones.
- Compared to other characters, Nikki actually cares the most about her schoolwork.
- Some likable or tolerable characters.
- Although they're poorly written and unfunny, there are a few funny jokes here and there, such as Nikki listing all of the things she'd rather do than read Moby Dick: either clean the entire house with a toothbrush, brush her teeth with the toothbrush she cleaned the house with, visit her neighbor for a detailed update on her bunion surgery, and hang out with Brianna.
Reception
Despite receiving positive reviews from critics, Dork Diaries has received mixed-to-negative reviews from readers with praise for the anime-esque art but criticism towards Nikki being an unlikable protagonist, the cliches, girliness, and questionable messages it sends to kids.
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