Eleven year old Sam’s story begins in the first
book, The New Kid: Unpopular Me, when
he moves from Adelaide to Canberra.
Being the new kid at school is something lots
of readers will relate to. All Sam wants to do is make a few friends while he’s
trying to adapt to a new life.
He’s an only child, bad at reading and forced to
go to special classes to improve his skills. He is befriended by Gary, whom
nobody likes or talks to for unspoken reasons.
Sam is lonely. He goes to great lengths to make
friends. He allows one girl’s young sister to practice hairdressing on him. You
can guess how that ends.
Then there’s the constant badgering from Johnny Wilson
the class bully, and his band of followers.
His life is a series of
misadventures and mishaps. A disaster in fact, as it includes his mother’s
insistence that she shop with him for underpants. All that’s left to Sam is to
take measures to become popular.
But it takes the disaster at the school play to
turn things around and make Sam and Gary the most popular kids at school.
The sequel, The
New Kid: Very Popular Me sees Sam after turning disaster into triumph on
stage. Now he has what he wants – popularity. Gary too!
A new baby is coming. Perhaps now his helicopter
mum will have something else to focus on. Meanwhile, he is forced into a
cleaning frenzy of the garage, while a marble craze is underway at school. Sam
discovers Aunt Mable’s jar of marbles with a very special one in it. This
increases his popularity, and added to that, Amy from the coolest group of
girls, proclaims him her boyfriend. Could things get better?
But all these things suddenly reverse in a series
of events that will keep readers laughing out loud and that continue will to
intervene, and bring Sam to his unpopular state once again.
Sam’s lack of friends forces him to make more stupid
decisions. His former friendless friend Gary has installed a pool and has all
the friends he needs. He now ignores Sam. Amy has broken off with him. Johnny
Wilson is forcing him to cheat for him in his tests, and magpies keep attacking
him. And, he has lost his special marble. Will his world ever stop spinning out
of control?
Matthew Martin’s hilarious and quirky illustrations
spark up the text which really stands up well alone, but they do add quite a
bit of visual stimulation. At all times it seems an unending catastrophe but
its ending is a delight when everything comes full circle in an interesting and
unexpected way.
Title:
The New Kid: Very Popular Me
Author:
James O’Loghlin
Illustrator:
Matthew Martin
Publisher:
Pan Macmillan, $9.99
Publication
Date: June 2019
Format:
Paperback
ISBN:
9781760554835
For
ages: 9+
Type:
Middle Grade Fiction