Jessica Darling's It List: The (Totally Not) Guaranteed Guide to Popularity, Prettiness & Perfection

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In this one, Jessica is 12, a seventh grader, and very, very stressed about her image and appearance. However, McCafferty manages to deal with all the awful angst of junior high with a sense of humor, a light touch, and a final positive outcome. Even Jessica's parents come off positively (which is no small feat for middle grade fiction)!

To discuss: Jessica's mother and older sister put so much emphasis on her looks. Her mother never really apologizes in the film. We talked about why parents might be like that. But my daughter - who is kinda like Jessica - really felt that she would feel like I valued her less if I focussed more on her appearance. That being said... How many books is this series going to have? I assumed McCafferty was going to stop at three, so I was quite surprised to find that this one ended on the biggest cliffhanger of the lot. And quite frankly, it makes me a little suspicious. How much of Jessica's journey up to Sloppy Firsts are we going to follow? This series was already unnecessary, even if it was fun and mostly harmless. But some authors just milk their stories way more than they should, and I'm concerned that this series might follow down that path. Everything's fine for now--Jessica has yet to jump the shark--but I hope that McCafferty knows when to quit while she's ahead. The issues I have: Jessica and crew would have graduated from HS in 2002. In middle school, these kids would not have used terms like "deets" or "try-hard". Those are both modern slang terms that my generation didn't use, but my current students DO use. They also wouldn't have had cellphones or text messaging in the mid to late 90s, so I'm not sure what was meant by "blee-bloop" conversations instead of literally talking to someone on the phone. I guess I could associate this with the old school AOL Instant Messenger... And I guess Jessica's story about dropping her phone in the toilet COULD be a cordless. However, I felt like the story was dancing around the time line to make it feel modern, despite the fact that the original YA books are firmly set in the early 2000s.

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The kids will relate to the problems these girls share. What’s beautiful about this film is that Jessica Darling discovers she is a strong, independent girl and her persistence to be that emerges during one of the most trying times in the formation of a person’s identity: the beginning of junior high. There is no word yet on whether there will be a sequel to Jessica Darling’s It List (2016). However, the ending of the movie leaves the door open for a sequel, so it is possible. The ending of the movie is heartwarming and satisfying. It leaves viewers with a sense of closure while still leaving the door open for a sequel. How to dress like Jessica Darling There's a lot of innocence in Jessica. She's more comfortable in herself and her decisions than her sixteen-year old self...that is, until her older sister Bethany shows up to bust her bubble and freak her out about starting junior high. In 2006, Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan was accused of plagiarizing the first two Jessica Darling novels, as well as the works of other writers, in her highly publicized debut novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. [4] [5] [6] Novels [ edit ]

Smart and accomplished enough to delight all readers. Jessica’s an original, but her problems are universal…If you don’t see yourself in Jessica Darling, you’re not looking hard enough.”—Chicago Tribune See, Jessica, intelligent though she is, does not excel at pretending to be something she is not. Her half-hearted attempts end up fooling no one. Jessica's a bit of a dork and a teacher's pet, and there's no changing that. If she doesn't care about boys, she won't pretend to and she has trouble caring about her friends' woes over such things either. In fact, her biggest seventh grade fails occur when she stops being Jessica, like when she signs up for CHEER TEAM!!!, which she does not have the spirit for.A fast, fun read, ideal for tweens and young teens, Jessica Darling's It List #2 is a realistic, not-too-sketchy portrayal of the transition from elementary to middle school. Jessica Darling, a 7th grader attempts to reconcile two rival friend groups as well as master an unexpectedly challenging woodshop. One of the the biggest highlights of this book for me was Jessica’s relationship with her grandma. With her parents so occupied, her grandmother is staying with them for a few weeks and I loved the sounding board she provided when Jessica was feeling a little lost. Not going to lie — made me tear up in some spots because of my own close relationship with my grandma at that age. It was a nice touch to have her a part of the story. Of all of the It List books, The (Totally Not) Guaranteed Guide to Stressing, Obsessing, and Second-Guessing feels the least clichéd and predictable. I don't know if that's for better or worse--on the one hand, it was nice to read something that didn't resemble a whole bunch of other middle school drama books I've read in the past, but on the other hand, all of the extensive drama about a school dance and the petty feuds felt more than a little tiresome. I have no idea if there is a seventh grade class in the world where all of that ridiculousness goes on, but it seemed too far-fetched for me, even for comedy and drama's sake.