A Midsummer Tights Dream by Louise Rennison

I reviewed the first book in this series (Withering Tights) not too long after I started blogging, and I don’t think I quite managed to explain my love for Louise Rennison. She wrote Angus, Thongs, and Full-frontal Snogging, and then the nine wonderful books preceding it in the Confession of Georgia Nicholson series.

Her main characters are definitely on the younger side of the young adult spectrum. And I started reading them when I was that age, before I was in high school. However, even now over ten years later, I am still laughing out loud at the sarcasm and the wit involved in her characters! All of these books are super fast, easy, short reads. And they will all make you laugh, guaranteed.

Louise Rennison is by far one of the most talented YA writers out there. She is capable of keeping me interested in her characters (over a decade!) and I never get tired of anything she has to say. I just love how comic she is! And she just seems like one of the authors I wish I could know and be friends with because she seems like she’d be so cool!

Any way, the book takes place not too long after book one finishes. Tallulah is back at Dother Hall, the school she spent her summer being an artist in. She somehow got into the school program, and is back to hanging around trees with her best friends. Her owlets have started to grow up. She’s also back to having the same crushes.

And while a large part of this book is pure comedy, there’s a lot of classic coming of age moments as well. She learns really quick what it’s like to fall for someone who’s in love with someone else. She learns that she’s really good at pretending that she doesn’t care what people think of her. And as the title suggests, the first school term focuses on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Talllulah is asked to play Bottom because the higher-ups in school who see Tallulah as “trouble” know that she’s okay making a fool of herself in public. She actually goes on stage in furry tights and Mickey Mouse ears to do an Irish donkey dance…And the audience loved every second of it.

Dother Hall is having some financial problems. And there are notes all over the building asking students not do things (like shower) too often. And between all the fairy dances and play preparations, there are a lot of financial worries. One of Tallulah’s friends actually leaves school because someone in Hollywood hires her! There’s a lot to learn about snogging, licking, boyfriends, journaling, and friendship. And I kind of like that Tallulah doesn’t have a boyfriend yet. She doesn’t have to have one (though she’d like to).

I read this book in one sitting. It read so fast because of its journal-type format. And there’s the trademark glossary of British and made up terms in the back. I really can’t even begin to explain the humor that I love so much though without a few quotes I took note of. I just had to share these:

This takes place right when Tallulah comes back to school. She stays with family who lives in the village where her school is.

“So here I am back in my old squirrel room. Sitting on my wooden bed with the squirrel carved into the bedhead. With my feather potato. I’ve brought back my squirrel slippers, the ones that Dibdobs gave me when I first came. She said they were to make me feel at home. Which they would have done, had my home been in an oak tree” (16).

And this takes place in the same family home not much past this first quote. Note: Harold really likes to knit…:

“I had a crumpet and some honey and milky coffee. The honey is local of course. Harold is obsessed with local produce. I bet he knows the bees by name. And has made them little winter cloaks like his. And is paying their tuition fees to Bee Academy. So they can better themselves and get out of the worker-bee trap” (34).

And then this quote just sounds better out of context:

“I nearly said, “I am not an ice cream! I am a human being!”’ (39).

This book gets a 10/10 from me. And I seriously had to cut myself short with just three shared quotes. I could have listed all 20+ quotes I noted in my book. Those were just my beginning favorite quotes. I have a lot of post-its in this book…It’s just so good. If you want a book that will make you laugh out loud, please go pick this up!