Saturday, December 22, 2007

MILLICENT MIN GIRL GENIUS

Millicent Min Girl Genius, Lisa Yee, Scholastic Inc, 2003, 248 pp


My boss at the bookstore gave me this book to read when I first started working there. Lisa Yee lives somewhere in Los Angeles and did an event at the store before I came there to work. She now has three books out.

This is a wonderful book for readers aged 8-12. Millicent is a certified genius, going into her senior year of high school at age 13. She is a geek of course and quite socially challenged, so her mom makes her take volleyball in the summer. She also gets roped into tutoring another Chinese kid named Stanford Wong, who is a jock but failing English.

At volleyball, Millicent finally makes a friend named Emily and because Millicent is afraid to tell Emily about her IQ and all, plenty of trouble ensues. Especially gnarly is the attraction between Emily and Stanford Wong.

Yee does a great job with Millicent's geeky ineptness side by side with her intelligence. The emotions of 12 and 13 year olds are in the same turmoil no matter what else is going on, so that is where these three characters touch and affect each other. Even the ending, where everything gets worked out, is handled well and never feels sappy. I am glad I read it and recommend it often.

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