PRINCESS IN LOVE

What is a princess to do when she doesn’t feel sparks fly after kissing Kenny, her supposed boyfriend, because she’s really in love with her best friend’s brother, high-school senior Michael Moscovitz? And, oh yeah, Michael is probably falling for a girl who cloned a fruit fly, her mother is expecting the baby of her algebra teacher, no one has asked her to the Nondenominational Winter Dance (not even Kenny), and she has to prepare for her Christmas-time introduction to the populace of Genovia. Once again, Mia captures all her ups—and mostly downs—in her diary, which is all told in perfect teenage vernacular. But when some of her greatest dilemmas are discovering the nuances of French kissing and a one-day suspension for thwarting a student walkout, readers can’t help but love this self-obsessed (i.e., normal) teenager. Princess lessons with Grandmère may be paying off in this volume, as Mia’s self-deprecating humor gives way to a newfound spunkiness. The third in the series (Princess in the Spotlight, 2001, etc.) has the best ending yet, which proves that princesses—even tall, flat-chested, algebraically challenged ones—always find true love. (Fiction. 12-15)