Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

Home > Books > The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾

Book Synopsis

Friday January 2nd
I felt rotten today. It’s my mother’s fault for singing ‘My Way’ at two o’clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children’s home.

Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life.

Writing candidly about his parents’ marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and ‘misunderstood intellectual’, Adrian’s painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared.

Our Review Panel says...

I’m going to get a bit gushy about this book. I think this might have been the book that made me think that I might want to write down funny things. It is SO funny and SO sad and SO tender and SO warm and SO heartbreaking. It’s such a skilfully observed book that so evokes what it was like to be a spotty teenager in the mid 1980s that I honestly thought Sue Townsend might have reached inside my brain. I read and re-read this a million times and the good news is that the sequel, the Growing Pains of Adrian Mole is just as good.

Booklists you might also like...

Subscribe to our newsletter

Your Review

Stone Girl Bone Girl

review

Year group(s) the book is most suitable for:

Year group(s) the book is most suitable for:

Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.)?

Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.)?

Would you recommend the book for use in primary schools?

yes

Curriculum links (if relevant)

Curriculum links (if relevant)

Any other comments

Any other comments