AUTHOR: Libba Bray
PAGES: 396
PUBLICATION DATE: May 24th 2011 by Scholastic Press
SOURCE: Library, ebook and audio book
LINK: Goodreads Beauty Queens, Libba Bray offical site
The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner. What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program - or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan - or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up? Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Your tour guide? None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is a book I read for my Young Adult Book Club this month. This is a great book for a book club. It really does give a lot of topics to discuss. It is a book full of satire. A lot of people love it.. well I really disliked it.
I suppose that maybe I am just not one for satire. I don't like the show Family Guy for this reason.. I can watch it but I just don't think it is as funny as everyone else. Just not my sense of humor. This book is similar to Family Guy's humor to me. I just find that this book tries to take on way too much. What it is about is 50 teen beauty constants who are on a flight that ends up crashing onto an island. They only have their makeup and their outfits to survive with. There is a Corporation on the island, pirates, big snakes, and all kinds of other trouble. I like the idea of this story. I actually wish it would've been just a story about that.. but we have to add in all kinds of moral lessons.
As you read a long there are a lot of footnotes, and commercial breaks. Which of course reminds us that reality shows are bad... products are bad. We learn about some of the teen contestants that are left alive and they of course live up to their stereotypes. Ms. Texas is bossy and very southern. Religious and what not for example. We read about body image, sexism, racism, you name it you will read about it here. The contestants that are still alive include: a person of color, a bi-sexual, a homosexual, a transsexual, someone who isn't very smart, someone who is mechanical, someone who is very sexual and feels embarrassed because she is a woman, on and on with these stereotypes. For me.. it was too much. But don't let this review sway you from reading this book... people just love it!
I agree with all the messages in the book.. but just too many at once. The audio book is FABULOUS though. Libba Bray does it herself and she does such a fantastic job of giving each girl her own voice. I finished the book in ebook format but the audio was just amazing. It has sound effects even! I made it to 80% of the book according to my ereader and just couldn't do it anymore. I have been trying to read this book for about 3 weeks. I finally just skimmed through the rest so you could pretty much say this was a DNF (did not finish) for me. I really did try. I just didn't care anymore about the ending. I felt like this book was like a terrible movie parody that we see all the time in the theater. I can't stand those either so right then I should've known this book wasn't for me. I always go into books without reading what they are about or reading the cover to see so it was a complete surprise to me.
The crystal ball says:
Thunder is booming!! Run inside and don't bother reading!
