A Review of 'Beauty Queens' by Libba Bray (Audio Book)

"The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras.  But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner.

What's a beauty queen to do?  Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program-- or wrestle snakes to the ground?  Get a perfect tan-- or learn to run wild?  And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?

Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness.  Your tour guide?  None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of 'A Great and Terrible Beauty' and 'Going Bovine.'  The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again."

'Beauty Queens' is awesome to listen to via audio book!  I loved that the author herself read the book!  I also loved that she took on different voices for each of the characters and there were even some sound effects, which was awesome!  A few times throughout the book, there are "commercial breaks" so while Libba is talking in a candy-sweet voice drenched in sarcasm, there is twinkly and fantastical music playing in the background of the advertisement.

This book is perfect for teenage girls, feminists... heck, everyone should read this!  There is so much to go through... with thirteen very different characters, there are so many things to cover.  One character is transgender, another is the only black girl in the pageant, another girl has an Indian family, but that's not what makes her so interesting.  There are themes of acceptance, consumerism, personal images, what it means to be beautiful, etc.  I would love to bring this into my (future) English class someday and create a curriculum around it because there's so much to talk about!

As I sort of implied before, this book is for all audiences, I think.  It's not just about a pageant, which I thought most of the book was going to be about.  There's parts about survival, spy missions, a threat to overthrow the plot... if you're a fan of 'Lord of the Flies' and to some extent '1984,' (at least the concept of being watched), this will help ease the fact that this book is about a pageant and beauty queens.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I plan to acquire it for my own shelf so that I can carry out my plan of teaching this someday (along with 'The Fault in Our Stars,' which I have begun reading again).

Since I have talked about who would like this book, I will skip right to the rating...

Overall, I give 'Beauty Queens':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude