Diary of a Real Payne Review

Vendor: Barbour Books
Product: Diary of a Real Payne Book 1: True Story
Recommended Age: 8-12 years old
Price: $5.99

Barbour Publishing allowed me to review their book called Diary of a Real Payne Book 1: True Story. This book is written by Annie Tipton about a 10 year old named EJ that seems to be a bit misunderstood.  EJ lives in the boing old town of Spooner Wisconsin.  This book is about the things she thought about the town with lots of humor.  Like the title says, it is a diary of her life. EJ is in fourth grade and has a father that is a pastor, a mother that is a teacher, and then a brother who is (in her words) a space invader.  Having her dad being a pastor brought on the fact that this is a Christian based book, which is always a plus in this house.

The book is 15 chapters and each of those chapters start off with a entry into EJ's diary. The first several pages are a long entry in which she talks about her family and describing herself.  She loves her family, reading, and daydreaming.  The diary entries are what sets the bar to what the chapter is going to cover.

Kailea is the reader of this review.  She is 8 years old and is a very advanced reader in general. Though I try to push her for the more advanced books, many are not as enjoyable.  She was very excited to try out a new kind of book.  We do daily self reading in our home so her goal was to read at least a chapter everyday to meet that requirement I have set.  Usually she got so into the book, while sitting on the couch giggling, she continued to read more than her required chapter.

Kailea said the book was very funny and enjoyed reading it.  It also prompted her to comment on EJ learning lessons from things in life and she thought that was really neat.  Kailea thought it was very neat that the book was real and this was about a real girl and the real things in her life.  She is my kid that analyzes everything, she also has a hard time understanding make believe. I think this book was awesome because it was a good read with humor and it allowed my daughter to read it knowing it was true to form.  When she reads fiction books of similar genre she gets frustrated at the falseness and then doesn't want to finish the book.  I can't say there was a part about this book that we didn't like!

Book number 2 comes out in March of 2014 called "Church Camp Chaos".  We can not wait to get it and read it as well.  Kailea is ready for it already too.  I think that I will read this one out loud for my younger kids and then when the new one comes out Kailea can read it out loud to them.