Dork Diaries: Tales From a Not-So-Fabulous Life by Rachel Renée Russell (Simon & Schuster, 2009) is a young adult graphic novel told in diary entries about a 14-year-old girl’s journey through her first month at a new school. The book was both a New York Times and USA Today best seller. It also won the Children’s Choice Book of the Year Award for the fifth/sixth grade division (2010) and was nominated for Book of the Year by the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards in 2011.

Rachel Renée Russell is the author of over 20 books for young readers in the Dork Diaries and The Misadventures of Max Crumbly series. She attended Northwestern University before going to law school and becoming an attorney. She currently lives in Virginia, where she continues to write.

This guide follows the 2009 Simon & Schuster version of Dork Diaries.

Plot Summary

Dork Diaries opens two days before Nikki Maxwell’s first day at Westchester Country Day Middle School. Nikki desperately wants to be popular, but without a cell phone or the designer clothing that every other student seems to have, she fears she’ll never be one of the cool kids. On her first day, Nikki attracts the ire of MacKenzie Hollister, the most popular girl in school, who spends the entire book making fun of Nikki’s appearance and her dad’s job as an exterminator.

Nikki wants to enter the yearly art contest, but she’s afraid of making a fool of herself in front of the popular kids and chickens out. Instead, she signs up to work in the library, where she meets two girls who are really into books. Despite trying not to like books, Nikki gets close with the girls, who convince her that the three of them have to go to National Library Week in New York in the spring. The school librarian plans to send three dedicated students, and the girls decide to get reading-related tattoos to show their loyalty.

Their parents say no to the tattoos, so Nikki decides to draw temporary ones on her friends’ arms to cheer them up. Drawing inspires her, and she enters the art contest after all. The tattoos also draw the attention of the popular crowd, and soon the entire school is talking about Nikki’s art. Nikki’s friends create a book donation program, encouraging people to donate books in exchange for a tattoo. While Nikki enjoys it at first, she soon feels overworked and ignored by her friends.

On the day of the art contest, Nikki is late. She gets a ride to school with her dad, and in her rush, she leaves the painting she plans to enter on the ground, where her dad runs over it. Feeling hopeless and abandoned by her friends, Nikki decides to transfer schools.

A couple days later, Nikki collects her things from her locker and sneaks into the art contest exhibit to see who won. To her surprise, she discovers that her friends entered photographs of her tattoo designs in the contest, and Nikki won first prize. Realizing her friends do care, Nikki stays at Westchester, determined not to let MacKenzie and the popular kids get to her anymore.