Serafina67 *Urgently Requires Life*

by Susie Day

Book Overview

Fifteen-year-old Sarah urgently requires a real life. She can't talk to her too-sad mother. She can't talk to her father now that he lives with the StepMonster. And talking to the gorgeous Patrick... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0545073308
• ISBN13: 9780545073301
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Scholastic Press
• Length: 235 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.0" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

92 / 100

serafina67 chronicles Sarah's (aka serafina's) pursuit of happiness as she tries to get her teenaged life in order. The story is told first person via serafina's blog and includes as much drama and angst as one girl can handle. It's a hilarious yet oddly touching read full of fake-emo characters and real family drama. Some readers won't like the lolspeak (ie. internet language) used in the book, but others will find it endearing and wonderful (like I do!). [...]

Enchanting Review: Serafina67 *urgently requires life*

SERAFINA67 *URGENTLY REQUIRES LIFE* SUSIE DAY Contemporary Young Adult Scholastic Press Rating: 4 Enchantments Told completely in blog form, SERAFINA67 *URGENTLY REQUIRES LIFE* tells the story of Serafina, a fifteen year old who's dealing with her parents divorce, her life seemingly threatening to unravel around her, not to mention the usual teen angst and the fact that she's suddenly attracting more people to her blog than she ever imagined, including one mysterious commenter she can't figure out their real identity. I have to admit it took me quite awhile to get into the book. I'm not sure whether it was the blog format or the character of Serafina herself, that there was something about her that took awhile to get used to, maybe it was hard to figure her out for the first while. But by the halfway point, I really started to enjoy the book and Serafina's story. Susie Day always wanted to be a writer. At the age of 8 she co-wrote a radio play entitled "Paperback Writer", based on the Beatles' song and inexplicably about a racehorse that really wanted to win the Grand National. Susie's first boo, Whump!... in which Bill falls 632 miles down a manhole, won the BBC Children's Fiction Prize. She lives in Oxford, UK. Lisa Enchanting Reviews October 2008

Courtesy of Teens Read Too

Susie Day's SERAFINA67 *URGENTLY REQUIRES LIFE* is a hilarious and intimate peek about being a British teenage girl, which besides the weird slang is strikingly familiar to being an American teen. It takes place over approximately four months and is entirely composed of Serafina67's blog and accompanying comments. (Note: There is a glossary in the back with definitions to weird English slang. Don't be like me and discover it after you've finished reading.) Serafina67 is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with her mum and visits her dad on weekends. She has a witch under her skin that makes her act terribly sometimes and has made a resolution to be accomplished on April 22nd (blog starts on Christmas) to be happy. On the way, she is helped and hindered by her real and blog friends, Crazy Pete the therapist, her parents (and their significant others), and, of course, her blog. It's hard to describe Serafina, because she's very full-fleshed and complicated. She can be bouncing off the walls and wonderfully excited about her VTN (Very Thrilling Novel) at the beginning of one day and feel fat, miserable, and prone to chocolate by mid-afternoon. And even when she's at her lowest, she finds humorous ways to unload it onto her readers. She often summarizes horrible events with hilarious but appropriate imaginary dialogue, but one of my favorite moments is when she doesn't feel up to posting and hence composes a blog post entirely in haiku and her friends comment accordingly. This book reminded me a lot of Stephen Chbosky's epistolary novel THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER, not only because of its content, but also because it feels almost interactive. As I read the posts and the character's reactions, I realized that the format was really cool because it's a mixture between first person (Serafina) and third person (various comments). It was also a neat blur between the privacy of a journal and the public-ness of the Internet. One of Serafina's friends, Georgia Darkly, finds her by Googling "mermaid" and "anorexia." This is a really fun read and the author, Susie Day, touches on a lot of issues -- I won't call them teen issues, because teens don't have a monopoly on being unhappy even though it sometimes feels like it -- without getting motherly, moral, or "I've-been-there" about it. And I swear that you don't even have to be(en) a teen girl to enjoy it. This book applies to anyone who has ever thought the Parents are crazy, said something they shouldn't have, or just hates their life. Reviewed by: Natalie Tsang