Too cool for school…or the least groovy girl in the grade?
Sunny's just made it to middle school…and it's making her life very confusing. All her best friend Deb wants to talk about is fashion, boys, makeup, boys, and being cool. Sunny's not against any of these things, but she also doesn't understand why suddenly everything revolves around them. She's much more comfortable when she's in her basement, playing Dungeons & Dragons with a bunch of new friends. Because when you're swordfighting and spider-slaying, it's hard to worry about whether you look cool or not. Especially when it's your turn to roll the 20-sided die. Trying hard to be cool can make you feel really uncool…and it's much more fun to just have fun.
Full-color illustrations.
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It’s 1977, and Sunny is just starting seventh grade. She joins a group of boys who play Dungeons & Dragons, and she thoroughly enjoys the game, intrigued by the exciting stories and unusual monsters. Sunny also finds reminders of the game in real life, like comparing the gelatin in the school cafeteria to gelatinous cube monsters and applying the “always check for traps” rule to other risky tasks. But Sunny gets mixed messages from other girls and from teen magazines about how girls should look and act, and she starts to avoid the D & D group. It will be easy for readers to identify with likable Sunny as she struggles to balance her self-image with other people’s ideas about who she should be. Colorful, cartoony art adds humor and appeal. Though the book is the third in the series about Sunny, newcomers will easily dive right in. A sweet, funny, and silly story with a serious message at its core: stop trying so hard to be cool, and just have fun being yourself.
When seventh-grader Sunny takes the “Are You a Groovy Teen?” quiz in Teen!, you know it won’t go well. I mean, she still wears galoshes, a definite zero on the Groovy Meter. And then she has to go and become an eager initiate of Dungeons & Dragons, which might now have a nostalgic hipness in the wake of Stranger Things, but it was not something the cool kids did in 1977. Can Sunny remain true to herself, even as she sees best friend Deb racing ahead to the world of hot-rollers and boys? Readers of the first two Sunny books (Sunny Side Up, rev. 9/15; Swing It, Sunny, rev. 11/17 ) will know that Sunny will be fine, but not before an entertaining series of social gaffes and identity crises are met with Sunny’s essential good sense and the magic of D&D. Periodic appraisals by the Groovy Meter provide the graphic novel with a funny throughline of high and low (mostly low) moments, and the cartoon panels evoke the seventies vibe with just the mildest of satire (“Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans!”) and plenty of affection.