2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Murphy's Law, August 12, 2008
This review is from: Brittany Murphy (Robbie Readers) (Library Binding)
After reviewing NEVERWAS, a 2005 Brittany Murphy vehicle, I got a little note from Amazon suggesting that if I liked watching Brittany Murphy as a hard-hitting journalist nursing an ugly little secret (which I didn't), I might enjoy this book so I said, well maybe. When the book came I was surprised to find out it was for children in grades 1 to 4, with a second grade reading level.
I don't know about you when but when I was in grade 1 we never had books about people like Brittany Murphy, but apparently this is just one in a series of biographies for kids, about people kids like, including Alex Rodriguez, Dr. Seuss, Jamie Lynn Spears, Tony Hawk, Dakota Fanning and Jesse McCartney. They call these books "Robbie Readers," I can't figure out why. Maybe a little boy Robbie, perhaps the son of the publisher, picks out the topics and then they farm them out to adults to actually do the writing? I'm going to try to read more of these books, not because this one was so great, I just like the idea of being able to read a whole book in under five minutes. Lavishly illustrated with cute pictures of Brittany, the bio gives us a sanitized version of her strange and difficult road to the top, which included leaving her mother behind in New Jersey when she was 13 to seek fame in LA. Thoughtfully the book defines its terms well. "Los Angeles is a city in California where there are many acting jobs." Yes, and Brittany Murphy took most of them or so it seems from the lengthy filmography included at the back of the book.
Brittany was reunited with her mother (Sharon, who deserves a book of her own) at a later date, and helped see Sharon through a bout of cancer. She's a helper at heart. Her affair with uber-toothsome Ashton Kutcher is mentioned, but not her reputation for being the girlfriend from hell. If all Robbie Readers are as interesting I'm going to ask for that operation where I could be a kid again, playing on the playground and then reading my hardcover life of Mia Hamm for inspiration. Plus I have to find out how the author of "Jamie Lynn Spears" handles Miss Spears' recent pregnancy at age 16. Pro or con?
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