THE YEAR OF JAMIE'S DIARY

If Barbie Doll ever decides to go literate and include a diary among her frilly accessories, she probably won't mind taking this one over verbatim. Shortly before her 14th birthday, Janie Rawlings begins her record of this crucial growing up year. From the first ""Dear Diary"" to the concluding ""Nite-nite""-Janie clues the world in about how she faces up to realities and struggles through an arduous beautifying process. There are dazingly detailed descriptions of Janie's exercises, her weight and measurement charts and the progress of each of her fading pimples. When she is being really confidential she repeats her mother's explanation of the facts of life in words reminiscent of a slick feminine hygiene advertisement and, on occasional philosophic moments, writes poems of faith. Janie quickly catches on to the bewildering process of entering high school and makes good by becoming the first freshman cheerleader. Of course the main reason for all this enterprise is an interest in boys, actually one boy. For Janie it was love at first sight when she saw Greg patching his bicycle tire, and by the end of the year there's a wild surmise that ""this is it."" The author is a cosmetologist and might be able to write a book helpful to teenagers on the subject, but Janie's charm school personality is no deeper than any emollient skin cream can go.