Synopsis: The fourth of the ‘Bindi Babes’ instalments depicting the adventures of Amber, Jazz and Geena.

After introducing Auntie to Mr Arora, helping Molly Mahal restart her Bollywood career, supporting new student Kiran and getting their cousin Baby together with Brad Pitt look-alike Rocky, the girls feel that they need a new project. They decide to honour the memory of their late mother and ask Coppergate School if they, after raising sufficient funds to stock the new school library, could name the library after Anjleen Dhillon. However, the girls are stumped when they are asked to raise £10,000. Regardless of this setback, Amber comes up with an imaginative Big Brother-style idea: Who’s in the School which not only engrosses the school and the local community, but draws in a national interest as well.

Review: Another great book by Dhami which engages with the experiences and cultural concerns of second generation South Asian children growing up and going to school in the UK.

Though the protagonists may be of South Asian origin, this book will appeal to pre-teen and teen readers of all backgrounds. Dhami fuses everyday concerns such as chores, sibling squabbles, clothing dilemmas, school and boys with the recent rise in the interest in ‘Reality TV’. Readers will recognise Celebrity Big Brother 2007 winner Shilpa Shetty via the character Molly Mahal, and Dhami, by engaging with this show and in turn with the huge media attention which Shetty generated, draws in her young contemporary readership.

 This book, as well as engaging with modern-day media and teen interest, also briefly alludes to canonical pieces of literature. Referring directly to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (in particular the Pyramus and Thisbe story), William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and the character Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Dhami puts a contemporary ‘twist’ on these classic texts. Subsequently, Dhami translates these texts for her young readers which potentially make these canonical texts slightly more accessible.

Superstar Babes is important not only to the field of Children’s Literature of the South Asian Diaspora, but to Children’s Literature as a whole, and readers will find it a funny, entertaining and pleasurable read.

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2008-06-27