Summer reads – The Taming of the Tights by Louise Rennison
I was a bookworm as a child, gobbling up books as fast as my fingers could turn the pages. Up until the age of about 11 my favourites were Enid Blyton, Pamela Brown, Noel Streatfeild, Elinor M. Brent Dyer (The Chalet School series) and even though I was clueless about riding, anything by the Pullein-Thompson sisters. After that I turned to Lynne Reid Banks (I loved The L-Shaped Room), Meredith Daneman (A Chance to Sit Down is one of my all-time favourite novels), Jilly Cooper and all the classics.
But if I was an 11-year-old right now I’d be reading Louise Rennison’s laugh-out-loud books. She made her name as the author of the hugely successful Confessions of Georgia Nicholson books and has now turned her hand to a new series about 15-year-old Tallulah Casey, a pupil at a performing arts college in the wilds of Yorkshire.
The Taming of the Tights is the third in the series (following on from the brilliantly named Withering Tights and A Midsummer Tights Dream) and is just as funny as the others.
Tallulah is once again “chasing the golden slippers of success,” with varied results, and trying to sort out her complicated love life. Will she fall for the charms of wild boy Cain (who’s definitely trouble in my book) or play safe and choose nice boy Charlie (except he’s already got a girlfriend).
Hilarious, fast-moving and easy to read in the space of an afternoon, this is the perfect summer holiday read for teenage girls. Chaotic, wisecracking self-deprecating Tallulah is just the sort of girl we’d all like as a best friend. Even at my age.
The Taming of the Tights by Louise Rennison (HarperCollins Children’s Books, £10.99)