A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions

Gr 6–8—When readers left the Nerd Girls in The Rise of the Dorkasaurus (Hyperion, 2011), they had gotten just a smidgen of revenge against the group of mean girls in the school, the ThreePees. Unfortunately, this just added fuel to the ThreePees' fire. After a prank traps the middle schoolers in the art room with flying paint and supplies (thereby destroying school property), both groups are given a choice by the principal: join together to form the school's Academic Septathalon team or face suspension and possibly expulsion. Meanwhile, narrator Maureen has returned to junk food and sarcasm to cope with a personal crisis: her long-gone father has reappeared and wants to be a part of her life. Maureen, Barbara, and Alice work together once again to deal with the ThreePees and study feverishly to try to win the Septathalon. The sarcasm still makes it difficult to form an emotional bond with Maureen, but her personality underneath is showing through just a tad more, and Barbara and Alice also become a little more sympathetic as their home lives come into focus. The televised Septathalon is suspenseful, but the action comes a little too late, and the tension between the two groups seems more forced than realistic. For the most part, the adults and the ThreePees stay one-dimensional, and with the way he's portrayed, one wonders why Maureen would want to know her father at all. This installment is better than the first book, but is still just an additional purchase.—Kelly Jo Lasher, Middle Township High School, Cape May Court House, NJ