The Meanest Doll in the World by Ann M. Martin & Laura Godwin

Daddy's review

The Meanest Doll in the World is a followup to The Doll People. All the same players are back at the beginning of the story, the Doll family, the Funcrafts, and the Palmers whom they live with. The first complaint about this book is that it started off very slowly. We were halfway through the book before we even meet the mean doll, Princess Mimi (aka Mean Mimi). She is a terror to the other dolls, and puts all living dolls in jeopardy with her actions. But I never really found myself truly hating her. She's just not devious enough. There was a lot of potential for a real villain, and I just felt she was poorly developed. The book itself has pictures of Mimi and she's sort of scary looking. But the author never went out of her way to describe Mimi or her expressions, perhaps relying too heavily on the illustrations. I was reading this book aloud so the absence was noticeable.

I was disappointed by this book. The idea of a doll villain was appealing, I just wish she'd been better developed and more "real". The plot was rather predictable due to an overabundance of foreshadowing. The ending was anti-climactic. There were a few highlights, like the giant baby doll, but even that could have been so much better. I'm not sure where this book went wrong, it just felt like it missed the target somehow.

My review

I was looking forward to Daddy reading this to me since I liked the previous book (The Doll People) and this one sounded even more fun. I mean, a horrible bratty frilly princess doll, just imagine the kind of mayhem she could cause! And adventures she could have.

The problem with this book is that whatever you may have just imagined could happen, it didn't. She doesn't really do much and certainly nothing interesting. I found some of the other new dolls to be really creepy as well. I wasn't scared or anything but the idea of living dolls can be pretty creepy in itself and this just reinforced that feeling times a zillion. Or times a hundred, at least.

Mimi deserves a better story!