Realistic

Millicent Min: Girl Genius by Lisa Yee (2003) Published by Scholastic; 3 out of 5 stars
Millicent Min is a girl genius. She is 11 years old but has skipped several grades so that just as the book is starting, she is at the end of her grade 11 year. She is also beginning a summer college poetry course although her parents have other plans for her. Unfortunately, her extremely high IQ has also made it extremely difficult to make friends since her classmates find it weird that she is in the same class as them and peers her own age resent her for being so smart. Added to this situation is the fact that Millicent signs her high school yearbook in Latin, requests extra class work in her college course and states that "I have been accused of being anal retentive, an overachiever, and a compulsive perfectionist, like those are bad things." Millicent only “hangs out with” her cool grandmother, Maddie and her caring but weird (in that normal embarassing sort of way) parents. Concerned about Millicent’s lack of friends and her extreme academic focus, her mom has signed her up for volleyball lessons. In addition, her mom is also making Millicent tutor Stanford Wong, a family friend and the opposite of Millicent in almost every way. Throughout an eventful summer, Millicent meets Emily, her first real friend, learns how to deal with tutoring Stanford (who she initially calls “Stan-turd” and “Stink-ford”) and must handle family changes.

Young readers will enjoy reading this book about Millicent, who learns that who learns that she has more to offer to people than just her intellectual abilities. Millicent is a little annoying at first with her unawareness of her intellectual snobbery and her propensity to be a “know-it-all” and the plot is pretty predictable. However, I enjoyed her quirky personality, her off-the-cuff zingers and her interactions with her family and her struggles dealing with "normal" people like Emily and Stanford. I also liked the fact that in the end, Millicent learns that it’s actually ok to be a super genius but that she has more to offer than just this aspect of her personality. Millicent and her family are of Chinese origin but the book only makes brief references to this (although Stanford complains that Millicent is fulfilling the Asian stereotype and is making him and other Chinese kids look bad). However, the fact that the book doesn’t really have “racial issues” at its focus made it easier to be funny. This seems to be the only humourous multicultural YA book that I’ve ever read. Thinking back on my time as a young adult growing up as a minority, I was better able to relate to this depiction of growing up where I didn’t really experience racism or discrimination (and only occasionally had to deal with uninformed comments) than with other books where these issues are front and centre. This is a pleasant read for all ages but younger readers would probably enjoy this book more.