I remember the jolt of pure joy that ran through me when I spied the distinctive tartan check cover of this book, its corner peeking out below an avalanche of others at a school book fair late last year. “Penny Pollard’s Diary!” I may or may not have exclaimed out loud. “I remember this book!”
I, of course, bought it immediately. (It was 50c. A crazy bargain.)
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that no, I actually didn’t remember that much about the book. I remembered loving Polly, in that she was totally different to any girl that I knew. But as I sent my mind back through the decades to that Grade 2 student who had re-borrowed the book so many times in a row from the school library that I was eventually banned from ever doing so again, I realized that I could not recall a single detail of the story, and resolved to read it again to relive that childhood obsession.
And I get it. I had good taste back then. This book is gold. Penny is THE BEST. She’d be diagnosed as on the spectrum nowadays, but in the 80s, she was just a bit of an eccentric, as she sorted and resorted her horse swap cards (swap cards! Oh, the flashback that gave me!) and refused to wear dresses and made friends with an elderly lady who is just as non-conformist as she is.
Text-heavy for a picture book, and featuring actual photos that makes it all seem remarkably like a true story (if it is: where is the real Penny now, and why is she not my friend?), this “diary” features some Klein touches that are familiar to readers of her best-selling novel Hating Alison Ashley and — my favourite of hers — Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left, like the perfect pattern card of ladylike virtue that our heroine detests for no real reason, but that is all part of its appeal.
One thing of which I was utterly unaware until this very day is that there are FIVE sequels to Penny Pollard’s Diary that I guess my school librarian just never bothered to get in, because she hated me or something. How have I made it so advanced an age without learning that there was a sequel to a book that I — admittedly — didn’t remember, but did remember loving so very much?
We’re agreed, I do not need any more books to read. The whole point of this book-a-day TBR mission is to clear the decks of all the books I already own. But you don’t understand, I NEED these books more more than I need chocolate. More than I need air. They are now a physical requirement. My life will be incomplete until my Penny Pollard collection is, at last, now that I know that’s a thing, complete — and in original first edition format, too.
This is who I am. I can’t fight it, so I have to embrace it. I need to buy five kids’ books very, very much, and I will not be able to rest until I have found them and read them and they are mine. They’re currently running at about $13 each on eBay, by the way.
Turns out my 50c bargain is going to cost me more than $50.
Totally worth it.
SCORECARD
TBR DAY 102: Penny Pollard’s Diary (Penny Pollard #1 [!!!]) by Robin Klein
GENRE: Children’s Fiction
PUBLISHED: 1983
TIME ON THE TBR: 6 months.
PURCHASED FROM: School book fair.
KEEP: Yep.
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