Don't You Dare by CE Ricci
Published 1996 · 34,375 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Young Adult, Literary Fiction
How hard is Don't You Dare to read?
Don't You Dare scores 26 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 22 out of 100
- A young adult diary novel written in a teenager's voice, with Open Library reading levels of grades 9 to 12. The vocabulary is plain and contemporary, close to Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
- Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
- Diary entries by a high school student use short, direct sentences and conversational rhythm. The syntax sits near Beach Read's accessible structure.
- Abstraction: 28 out of 100
- The book is built on a girl's concrete family troubles recorded in her journal. Like It Ends with Us, it stays with personal experience rather than theory.
- Information density: 22 out of 100
- At about 34,000 words, it is a short book with a single narrator and a narrow set of events. It reads at the light pace of The Diary of a Young Girl.
- Narrative indirection: 38 out of 100
- The diary form means readers piece together what happens at home from Tish's entries, and she withholds some of it from her teacher. That gives more inference than Beach Read, though the voice stays direct.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- The material is realistic and issue-driven, built around the journal and the 'Do Not Read This' marking. Symbolism stays minimal, as in Beach Read.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- A teenage diarist writes sincerely, though Tish tests her teacher by marking every entry private. The tone sits close to the sincere voice of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
- Resolution withholding: 28 out of 100
- A school-year diary about family crisis points toward a defined resolution, in the manner of problem novels for young adults. Closure is likely clearer than in The Great Gatsby.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- The book is a linear sequence of dated journal entries across one school year, like the diary structure of The Diary of a Young Girl. The only twist is the entries' private marking.
How Don't You Dare is regarded
Don't You Dare holds a literary regard score of 20 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.