In October 2019, Salariya will be exploring the early history of Hollywood in The Long-Lost Secret Diary of the World’s Worst Hollywood Director, the latest title in the popular and acclaimed series of fictional diaries that put readers aged 7+ inside the heads of hapless figures from history in frazzling situations.
Written by Tim Collins and illustrated by Isobel Lundie, it is the candid and comical diary of Clara, a girl living in Los Angeles, California, in 1915, at the beginning of the Hollywood era. Suddenly, she finds herself working behind the scenes in the film industry for a big-shot producer called Mr Cheeseman. Can she make it to the top in showbiz and become a renowned director, or will her new career end in disaster?
‘Get Real’ fact boxes feature throughout the text, providing historical context and further information, and there is a timeline, brief biographies of historical figures mentioned in the narrative and a glossary in the endmatter.
A previous title in the series – The Long-Lost Secret Diary of the World’s Worst Astronaut – was chosen for the 2019 Summer Reading Challenge run by The Reading Agency, whilst The Long-Lost Secret Diary of the World’s Worst Pirate was shortlisted for the Lancashire School Library Service Fantastic Book Awards (FBA) 2017–18.
Author Tim Collin’s fiction for children has been translated into forty languages and has won awards such as the Manchester Fiction City and The Kalbacher Klapperschlange.
Isobel Lundie is a graduate of Kingston University, where she studied illustration and animation. She is the illustrator of many children’s books.
