  | Full Text Reviews: Bulletin for the Center... - 09/01/2016 What has Isabella Antonelli hiding in her closet, sneaking out of her house, and jumping from the windows of her elderly aunts’ home, all to avoid her cousin Vincent and local news crews? Vincent’s film project-the one featuring Isabella and her wry observations of their family-has gone viral, exposing her for the garden variety Italian-American New Jerseyite she is, rather than the descendant of royalty her friends at her fancy new prep school believe her to be. The deception began innocently enough: when Isabella’s affected Aunt Kiki, rich from playing a countess on a daytime soap, enrolls her in the sixth grade at Fortier Academy for Young Women, people think “the Countess” is her mother. It’s an amusing premise helped along by the charming smart aleck Isabella and a slew of zany side characters. The exposition, however-a near-constant stream of time stamps and scene/take delineators interspersed with flashbacks and graphic panels-creates more chaos than cohesion, making it a challenge to follow the storyline or infer why Isabella is hightailing it around her neighborhood, avoiding her cousin and the cameras at all costs. While it all rights itself in the end, just as readers grasp what has transpired, an eleventh-hour arrival of Isabella’s long-lost father sets up a sequel-a complete non sequitur given his barely meriting a mention over the course of the novel. Readers who can roll with the random will enjoy their time with Isabella and her wacky family, even if they’re left wondering what, exactly, they just read. AA - Copyright 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Booklist - 10/15/2016 Isabella transfers to a spiffy private school, and a rumor earns her some new pals who won’t accept that she’s an ordinary girl living with her big Italian family. Tired of fighting it, she lets her new friends believe she’s the daughter of a contessa. For a class project, her cousin films her giving a quirky tour of their family home, uploads it to YouTube, and unintentionally makes her an overnight sensation. Now Isabella has to figure out how to fix things and keep her friendships intact. This story is told in a series of comic strips and short, diarylike entries in the first person. The strips are not unlike the kind you might find in the Sunday paper: short and sweet, ending with a funny moment that leads into the next section of text. Isabella lives with mainly old relatives and has an “older” vocabulary, so some references might go over young readers’ heads, but the funny and engaging story is an overall charmer. - Copyright 2016 Booklist. Loading...
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