Prepare to Be Embarrassed! “The Extremely Embarrassing Life of Lottie Brooks” Is Becoming a TV Series

Being 11 is hard.

Being 11-and-three-quarters?

Apparently that’s when things get extremely embarrassing.

Katie Kirby’s bestselling “The Extremely Embarrassing Life of Lottie Brooks” books are making the jump from page to screen as StudioCanal and Deadpan Pictures begin development on a new live-action television adaptation.

And poor Lottie is about to have all of her most embarrassing moments brought to life for everyone to see.

The illustrated book series follows Lottie Brooks, an 11-and-three-quarters-year-old girl trying to navigate that particularly awkward point when childhood begins crashing directly into the complicated world of being a teenager. Secondary school brings plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong, and Lottie’s misadventures have apparently provided more than enough material to fill nine books.

Deadpan Pictures has described the series as a “pre-teen Bridget Jones,” which gives us a pretty good idea of the wonderfully awkward territory the television adaptation is preparing to enter.

Because growing up is rarely graceful.

Sometimes you say the wrong thing. Sometimes you do something you’ll remember at 2 a.m. for the next decade. Sometimes you’re completely convinced everyone is looking at you when, in reality, they’re probably too busy worrying about their own equally embarrassing disaster.

And sometimes all of that happens before lunch.

Josie Long, whose credits include “Skins,” and Holly Phillips, whose work includes “The Athena,” “Get Even” and “Dance Academy,” are adapting Lottie’s adventures for television.

Ailish McElmeel is producing the project for Deadpan Pictures, while M-K Kennedy and Paul Gilbert are overseeing for StudioCanal. Sarah Reese Geffroy will oversee the adaptation through StudioCanal Stories, the company’s book-to-screen label, which negotiated the rights to the series.

There is certainly an audience already waiting to see how Lottie’s life translates to television.

Published by Puffin, the nine “Lottie Brooks” books have sold more than three million copies around the world and have been translated into more than 30 languages. That gives the developing series a sizable group of readers who already know exactly how embarrassing Lottie’s life can get.

It also gives the creative team quite a lot of story to work with.

Rather than building a television world from a single book, Lottie’s awkward journey through growing up already stretches across an entire series. Friendships, school, changing relationships and all those painfully funny moments that feel catastrophic when you’re living through them give the adaptation plenty of room to let its young characters grow alongside its audience.

And that awkward in-between age deserves stories of its own.

Eleven isn’t quite little kid territory anymore, but it isn’t the full teenage experience either. You’re changing, your friendships are changing and the world around you suddenly seems to have acquired an entirely new collection of unwritten rules that everyone else somehow forgot to explain.

Lottie Brooks is right there in the middle of it.

StudioCanal Kids & Family will handle worldwide merchandising and licensing for the property, while the television series itself remains in development. No broadcaster, release date or casting has been announced yet.

So we have a little while before Lottie’s extremely embarrassing life becomes extremely embarrassing television.

That’s probably good.

She might need the extra time to prepare.

Although at 11-and-three-quarters, we’re not sure you can ever truly prepare for secondary school.