The Purrfect Plan (Katie the Cat Sitter #4)
October 8, 2024 by Random House Graphic
Kendrick, Erika. Instafamous
E ARC provided by Netgalley
Katie is back after her adventures in Katie the Catsitter, Katie is still hanging out with the Moustress (Madeline Lang), who is still not wanting to be lauded for her activity at Cheesy Justice, even though there is a ton of fanmail that the cats are helping to manage. Katie also spends time with her mother, who is going to school and learning coding, and skateboarding with her friends in the Wheel-las. Madeline is still concerned about animals rights, fighting for cruelty free makeup as well as trying to get rid of the horse drawn carriages in New York City. A new evil has come up, however, and the Slim builds apartments are building very narrow apartments between buildings and blocking people's natural light. They have a lot of PR, which even includes a spectacular gala. Will Cheesy Justice and Katie (as her sidekick) be able to stop them?
This series has been very popular in my library; one of my 8th graders last year had the first book checked out constantly and did not want to bring it back. I found the storyline in this book to be a little more fragmented and hard to follow. I was also not particularly thrilled to see that Cheesy Justice was using AI to produce clips of the mayor saying things like "I just gotta shake my booty". I had a student debate with me WHY creating clips of people saying things they didn't say and posting them on line was wrong, and we finally came to the conclusion that it's lying. The cats in this are cute, and I like Katie's relationship with her mother, as well as all the girl power, but the series is not a personal favorite.
October 1, 2024 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Lyric Whitney Houston Darby is bound and determined to be a famous singing star just like her mother Jade, and she's angry that her mother and father (who is a drummer in Jade's band) won't let her audition for American Rockstar which has been her dream forever. Since there is a requirement for the show to have professional experience, Lyric (also called Boogie) is determined to get the lead role in the school production of The Wiz, even though rival Stormy Jackson, who is a distant relative of Michael Jackson, wants the role as well. Lyric's best friends try out with her, and Georgia and Twinkie both get parts. They run into trouble, however, since Georgia doesn't pay attention in school (she gets in trouble for playing video games in class and isn't apologetic at all) and Twinkie's social anxiety makes it difficult for her to get up in front of people to perform. Lyric forgets her mother's signature on the American Rockstar Permission slip and sneaks out for the audition, but she's too late. She does, however, break into song, and is discovered by Bailey, a junior producer who says that Lyric can go on to the next round if she has 10,000 Instagram followers. This leads her to block her parents from her account and spend a lot of time posting content, which makes her late to practice. Since Georgia is still not doing her school work, the play director talks to Mr. Chang, and the two agree that for Georgia to continue acting, she has to go to have a parent meeting and counseling for her attention span problems. Twink also needs support, and when Lyric isn't there to provide it several times, the two have difficulties. When Lyric finally does show up, she admits that even though she has so many followers and is so famous and talented, she gets sad sometimes as well. She eventually talks to her mother about this, and the two resolve to do better.
Like this author's Squad Goals and Cookie Monsters, Instafamous centers around a character at Valentine Middle School in California who is really invested in some of the questionable things that tweens are obsessed with. I did not particularly enjoy the extent to which Lyric lied to get her own way. She is late to practice so much that Stormy gets the lead role, but in the end, Stormy has an allergic reaction to Toto, and Lyric gets to be the star. She is still allowed on American Rockstar even though she doesn't have professional experience, just because her mother is famous. Not only that, but her mother and father even cave to her demands and get her an agent. I'm not one to quibble about characters lying a little bit, but Lyric has so few consequences for her actions that I was uncomfortable. Will tweens feel that way? No.
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