Customer Reviews

The Diary of Melanie Martin: or How I Survived Matt the Brat, Michelangelo, and the Leaning Tower of Pizza (Melanie Martin Novels)

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Meet 10 year old Melanie Martin, your average american kid and child travel critic . Melanie keeps a travel journal when her folks take her and her 6 year old brother Matt on a trip to Italy. Remember those family vacations you used to take as a kid? Well trust me, when you travel with Melanie, it'll all come rushing back at you.

Melanie's accounts of plane travel, Italian culture ("Almost everyone here speaks Italian-even kids"), and her goofy adventures with her family (at a museum she plays a game with Matt to "Point out the Naked People") will have you in stitches. Ms Weston is not only a funny writer, she's a mom and it serves her well in her accounts of family behaviour. This book reminds me of my own family trips when I was a kid (hey, when I was 11, my folks took me to Italy too! I can't say I appreciated it as much as Melanie did, but then maybe she should have joined us for the ride!)

Funny, breezy and filled with the easily believable dialogue of a ten year old (complete with doodles on the pages!) This is a great book for would-be travelers of all ages.

A must read with the monalisa, sistin chapel, and boots the cat. Also it has ton of poetry. The book makes your mouth water for more.

If you loved the Amelia books by Marissa Moss, you are going to go gaga over Melanie Martin and her world-class travel adventures with her family. Funny, touching, full of great details, how can you NOT love a book that has a map at the beginning? Like all the Melanie Martin books, this one encourages kids to travel widely in their imaginations and come home changed by their encounters. too bad all the adults who travel BADLY don't read Melanie before they head out! Great gift for any age Italian-bound tourist.

The Diary Of Melanie Martin is a book about a young girl called Melanie. She flies to Italy with her family on an airplane when she had never been out of the U.S.A. She loved the thought going to a foreign country, but things didn't turn out how she expected... I liked this book and all the characters in it. My favorite part of the book was when Melanie just went back home to the U.S.A. She had realized a lot about her family and learned some important values. Melanie inspired me to be nicer to my sibling, as she did in the book. I definitely recommend this book to anybody who has a sibling, or who has never been out of his or her country. In this book, she gives the lesson about trying new things and taking risks. I am sure that anybody who reads this book will learn some useful information about life! Enjoy!

Ten-year-old Melanie Martin is absolutely ecstatic to have the chance to visit Italy with her family. After all, how many 10-year-old kids get to visit a foreign country, and miss a day of school to do so? However, the minute Melanie steps on the plane headed for her lovely vacation destination, she realizes that maybe this isn't going to be the greatest vacation ever, what with her art-obsessed Mom dragging her to every museum in the country, her pain of a little brother, Matt, and her grumpy Father in tow. But as Melanie begins discovering poetry, Michelangelo, and Italian ice cream, as well as the true meaning of family, she begins realizing that maybe things aren't as bad as they seem. After all, having an annoying family is better than having no family at all, right?

GIRLS' LIFE advice columnist, Carol Weston, has proved that she knows more than her fair share about being a 10-year-old girl, forced to go on a family vacation, especially a family vacation to another country, and that knowledge shines through in Melanie Martin's voice. Melanie is a cute character, who young readers will relate to magnificently, seeing as how she she makes a big deal out of the tiniest dilemmas. Her younger brother, Matt, will find older siblings identifying with Melanie as well, as there is no older sibling who has not experienced the same aggravation that Matt causes Melanie. With short poems, and hand-drawn doodles littering every chapter, THE DIARY OF MELANIE MARTIN: OR HOW I SURVIVED MATT THE BRAT, MICHELANGELO, AND THE LEANING TOWER OF PIZZA, is sure to be a pleaser.

Erika Sorocco

My 10 year old daughter loves all four of the Melanie Martin books. She cannot put them down. Not only is she entertained, but also has learned a few things about other countries. As a teacher, I highly recommend the Melanie Martin books. I sure hope Mrs. Weston keeps adding more to this series.
Melissa Lombardo

I read melanie martin, and it was sensational!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I wanted to learn about Italy, and she helped me learn about it. Read this book, and you'll wanna read the other three book too.

Having traveled to Italy with my family when I was twelve, The Diary of Melanie Martin called back dozens of similar memories of all the museums which were endured with the promise of gelato and of the delicious food which Weston describes to mouth-watering perfection. Reading this book, I kept on wishing it had been around for my family vacation so that my brother and I could have played "Point out the Naked People" during our museum tours; now I can only wholeheartedly recommend it to every member of a family planning a trip to Italy or just looking for a funny and truthfully-written book too perfetto to be missed.

I used this book for our Mother-Daughter book club and the girls thoroughly enjoyed it (all age 9). Out of the five girls, only one girl didn't like it, and we believe it's because she and Melanie were too much alike. During the book club, they enjoyed talking about the poems Melanie wrote and trying to say the Italian words. They related tremendously with Melanie and they were all very excited to discuss her adventures through Italy.

The Melanie Martin travel series is the next best thing to taking a trip yourself. In this book you fly along with Melanie and her family (including brother, Matt-the-Brat) to Italy where you will feast on gelato and Italian food so perfectly described you feel like you are watching The Food Network. I felt as if I were with her family as it troops through museums and visits well known landmarks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We experience the trip through Melanie's journal which has an entertaining and realistic voice. The realities of traveling with children are understood by her parents who say, "Who wants gelato?" when they know the kids have had enough of art and ancient civilizations. As in the Holland book, Melanie introduces the reader to the local language, in this case Italian. The phonetic pronunciation is clearly spelled out.

The reader will empathize with Melanie's highs and lows and will be anxious to pick up the next book in the series when the next trip comes along.