Trial by Journal, by Kate Klise

"Trial by Journal" is about Lily Watson. She is on jury duty to help find out if, Bob White is guilty of killing one of her classmates, Perry Keet. Since she was going to be out of school for 6 weeks, she had to write in a journal. The journal was going to be counted as a grade. In the journal she kept massive amounts of evidence she found lying around, drawings, the first pages from an autobiography from one of the other jurors and old newspaper clippings about the trial. Lily ends up solving the case with all the evidence she had collected. 

 

The characters are Lily Watson, Rhett Tyle, Anna Conda, Fawn Papillon, Pricilla the Gorilla and Bob White. Lily is the main character. She is smart and her teachers describe her as a very interesting young girl. She is twelve years old and is forced to be on jury duty, due to a new law saying a juvenile juror needs to be on any case involving a child victim. Rhett Tyle is the owner of Tyle-O-Tropolis, an amusement park owner who is the proud owner of Pricilla the Gorilla. Pricilla is a gorilla and a very talented artist, who gives the park even more fame and fortune. Rhett also is supposed to have this amazing information that will prove Bob White guilty. Bob White is a strange character. He shows different personalities throughout the book. In the beginning he came off as mean, but by the end he doesn't seem that way. He seems nice. But it also sounded like he had always been nice, just accused of wrong doing, giving him that reputation. He also never got a firm education. Fawn Papillon is another juror and becomes friends with Lily. Anna, is a fashion designer, a snob and close friends with Rhett Tyle. She cares way to much about herself.

I really liked this book. It was fun to read. The book has a bunch of different newspaper articles, the pieces of evidence that Lily had, some of her journal entries and notes she took. It made the book really interesting and entertaining. There wasn't anything I didn't like about the book. My favorite part was when I was able to read all of the evidence that she collected, which was mainly notes being passed between Anna and Rhett. I also really liked reading Lily's journal entries. They were funny and serious at the same time.

I didn't visualize that much this time. I made a lot of connections to a bunch of other books I have read. I compared the way Lily wrote in her journal the way Anne Frank wrote in hers. Lily's weren't so serious, and she emphasised a lot of words, to show more emotion. I also compared it to other mystery books I have read. 

Kate Klise has also written the books"Regarding the Fountain" and "Letters from Camp". Her sister, Sarah, is illustrator for all of the books she writes. Kate is correspondent for "People" magazine. She lives in Norwood, Missouri. Sarah illustrates children's books and is an art teacher. She lives in Berkeley, California.