Book Review: Dara Palmer's Major Drama

Dara Palmer's Major Drama by Emma Shevah

This is a book for middle-grade readers, and a bit unusual for a book in the American market in that it is very British -- vocabulary, setting, the works. I wish there were more British books in the American children's market. Protagonist Dara Palmer drove me a little crazy, which is the point. She is a pop-culture-crazed preteen who is addicted to the TV, obsessed with vapid, gleaming Hollywood actors, and believes she is destined for stardom. She auditions for the lead in her school's production of The Sound of Music, and doesn't even get an ensemble role. Dara's journey over the course of the book leads her to acting classes (apparently there's more to it than practicing faces), and the practice of putting yourself in someone else's shoes -- in her case her arch-nemesis younger sister Georgia. The themes of adoption and belonging run through the book -- Dara was adopted from Cambodia, and is very obviously different from the others in her family. Georgia is adopted from Russia, and doesn't obviously stick out (and doesn't crave drama and attention like Dara), but that doesn't mean she doesn't also wonder sometimes about her biological parents in Russia, or about her life and culture. This might be an easy book to dismiss, but it is hefty and meaningful, and very well done.