Princess in the Spotlight

I'm becoming an accidental fangirl for Meg Cabot. I didn't read the first volume of The Princess Diaries, but I did see the movie and found it tolerable enough in a ripoff, low-achieving, but-at-least-it's-fun-spirited kind of way.

Now that I [in my ongoing commitment to a) read more books my future students might like, and b) not read anything overly polysyllabic on these hot summer days unless it's written with a wink] have read Princess in the Spotlight, the second volume of these chronicles, I can see what a dumb-down the movie did of the first book. What a disappointment. Julie Andrews would have been splendid in permanent eyeliner drag.

I'm not sure I'll go out of my way to keep reading about the trials of Princess Mia (since, at the end of the day, I'm not 15 and fairy tales are therefore even further out of my reach), but some of Cabot's romance and suspense might be fun to check out.