I must confess; when I saw a couple of
Emily The Strange books on the shelf at my local library recently, I inwardly squealed with glee. I didn't know there were any books about this girl; I thought she was just a fashion logo. I'd been very intrigued by her when I was about 14 because I felt she looked like a cartoon version of myself. Anyway. Needless to say, I grabbed the books. They're not the first in the series, so I'm sure there's some backhistory I missed out on, but that's okay. It's still pretty straightforward.
The first of the books I read was
Emily The Strange: Stranger and Stranger written by Jessica Gruner, Rob Reger, and Buzz Parker. The book is written in the style of a tween journal. A dark, semi-gothic and almost sociopathic journal, but a journal nonetheless, complete with drawings all over the margins. The story basically goes on to tell how Emily has moved to another new town, and in getting settled, invented a duplication device. Her initial ideas for purpose was to clone everyone in town and sit back to watch the pranking begin. However, she accidentally clones herself, and chaos ensues. She quickly comes to learn that this is not a perfect clone of herself; oh no. By outward appearances, yes. However, as a person... the device split her good and bad sides into two different people. So she herself has stayed good, and then there's basically an evil twin of herself running around rampant. How will she manage to remedy this? You'll have to read on to find out.
As far as quality goes, this is an incredibly easy read since it was intended for a tween audience. Had I have had the time to do so, I could have read this in a single sitting. So, if you're looking for a 'silent reading' book for school, this probably isn't the best pick, but if it's just for fun, I'd recommend it. Anyway, I'd rate it maybe a 3 and a half out of 5 stars. It's not bad, but it's not some fantastic amazing piece of literature. That said, it IS a fun read!
