DO NOT ENTER! 1

A sixth grader records his peeves and pranks at home and in school.

Charlie resolutely insists that he’s keeping a “notebook,” not a “diary,” because “only girls do that,” and anyway, he adds, “at least the stories I write are interesting. Nothing to do with what girls write.” He rejoices in harassing his teenage half sister, despite being inevitably caught and confined to his room by his “witch” of a mom, regards his younger twin siblings as “leeches,” shrugs off schoolwork, laughs when a schoolmate is fat-shamed, and nurses a crush on new classmate Justine. Readers are likely to scoff when Charlie suddenly turns out to have been a good kid all along, befriending the bullied classmate (whom he attempts to compliment in a problematic aside, “The more I look at him, the less I think he’s fat”), buckling down to improve his grades, and treating the twins more kindly. Casual misogyny and fatphobia pervade the story: “My dad’s the coolest (especially when mom’s not around)” and “today, FAT BOY (we call him that sometimes) needed his inhaler.” The cast largely presents white; one child with an Asian name is, stereotypically, “the BRAIN of the class,” and a friend’s nanny “from somewhere in Asia” doesn’t speak English, so “we can say ANYTHING we want…” Several blank ruled pages at the end offer room for diarists (or even boys) to fill in with personal grievances.

Contains an abundance of well-worn tropes alongside regressive stereotypes presented as humor.