Beth Montgomery First Book Review

Harper, C.M. (2006). Fashion Kitty. New York, NY: First Scholastic Printing.

  The Kittie Family is unusual in three different ways.  First they own a pet mouse and are vegetarians.  Second the two daughters in the family KiKi and Lana get to pick out all their own clothes.  And third they know the secret identity of 'Fashion Kitty.'  Throughout the story the identity of 'Fashion Kitty" is revealed as she goes through many adventures helping those challenged in their fashion.  In the end she helps a friend who was being bullied along with helping her fashion needs.

    I choose this book because it went along with our discussion of graphic novels, the pictures and first few pages intriqued me as I thought this was going to be a book about choosing your own fashion style, and being happy with your own unique self.  In the beginning couple of pages it leads you on to believe this as Lana the youngest daughter is talked about as having her own fashion style; wearing stockings on her neck, underpants on the outside of her jeans, two skirts, and running off saying " you're not the boss of my fashion"  In the end I did not like this book and how it potrayed fashion and the characters in it, I will discuss this book by certain pages that stood out to me and made me dislike the content.

   The first thing comes in how Fashion Kitty(who is actually kiki) is described, she has a brain that can mix and match hundreds of outfits in a second.  But in the beginning of the book its states that the Kittie family is one where the two girls can wear whatever they like, not having a mother who controlled what they wear.  Who is to say that what fashion kitty can mix and match is 'fashion'.  Also if they are aloud to wear whatever they like then why should KiKi be controlling or telling other people what to wear when she turns into fashion kitty?  This made me confused on the moral of this story.

  Another thing that turned me off to this story was how the family was described as having a mouse as a pet.  That this would be compared to 'a human having a chocolate cake as a pet' where they would have a urge to eat their pet, but in fact the Kittie family were vegetarians.  The story goes into great detail about how the mouse has a special smell-proof clubhouse in the closet of Kiki's room, and any time cats would come over the mouse would run into the room and lock the door.  It also talked about how Mother Kittie sprays blue-cheese air freshener all over the house to be safe when vistors come over.  This mouse seemed to be very special to them in all they did to protect it as a pet.  I was expecting this mouse to come up as an important part of the story, but it only had an appearance in the very beginning which confused me on the importance of that pet.  I just took the importance as that the family was different then all the others.

   One of the efforts of Fashion Kitty was to help Mary Jane who was going to wear polka-dotted shorts over her pants the next day at school because, 'Priscilla Persian, the most popular kitty in school', gave her a note to say that all her friends were doing it.  I liked that Fashion Kitty was helping someone who was being bullied and tricked as a joke, but as fashion kitty helps her to go through her wardrobe and change her style for what she was going to wear the next day in order to look 'just as good' in Fashion Kitty's eyes as the most popular girl in school.  If Fashion Kitty was going with her ways of wear whatever you wanna wear, her message would be to be yourself and wear whatever makes you comfortable, not what you think the most popular girl in school wants you to wear.

  Overall I disliked the book in that I felt it was choppy and didnt follow a story line that seemed to make sense.  I did like the easiness of the reading to get those to read that may not often pick up a book, along with the fact that it is a graphic novel.  There were a few good lessons in the book including how the family handled stress by thinking about how things werent that bad and could be worse.  There is a picture saying it could be worse if: KiKi had not woken up, Lana had hit her head, Father Kittie has fallen down.  This shows good stress management skills.