Reviews and Comments

I hated this book from the introduction, and I hate how much of it glosses over the shared work of other people. This is a persistent theme, especially from books for kids that are developed for the US market. Individualism reigns supreme, to the point where we get New Great Person Theory instead of genuine feminism. It's so annoying.

This is even true of Marie Curie's (very short) story, which glosses over the fact that her husband did fight for her recognition. This is something that is directly contradictory to many women in science during and after the Industrial Revolution, like Mileva Einstein-Marie (who was just as brilliant as Albert... but he never ensured her work was acknowledged). This doesn't even negate the feminist slant the book pretends to have; it very literally would highlight that part of the reason we know about Marie Curie's contributions is because someone else saw and fought that injustice with her (and that person was, surprisingly, her own husband).

Others that get factors glossed over include people like Peggy Guggenheim. It's mentioned that she was born into a wealthy and known family, but it's also written in a way that makes it sound like she would've had the same uphill struggle that others would've had. It's also very strange because her contribution is "saving artwork from the Nazis" because she had a lot of money, though the book doesn't even really do much beyond say that they "disliked anything representing modern sensibilities." It's like there's a reason why... that gets skimmed over.

Another thing is that this says "from around the world," but it's worth pointing out that many of the stories are either about people from the US or people who immigrated to the US. Like, it's noticeable to a fault (out of 35 total stories, half of them involve someone who matches that description), which feels like an implication that many of these people need to immigrate to the US to be successful. The same is true in the "more dreamers" who don't get full-page stories (just tiny blurbs).

It seems like a lot of kids' biographies often get this treatment of being a bit too dull. They're styled as stories, but they're written in the same structure as if the author is adapting the Wikipedia article. The only difference is that, instead of a webpage, we get to have the entries spread across thirty-something pages of (generally lovely) illustrations. As such, it doesn't really provide a narrative for the person. They also seem to think you have to include as much time in the story as possible, rather than focusing on single events.

The text itself really doesn't have much interaction between the characters. They don't really highlight the relationships between Katherine Johnson and those around her. It's very much, with the exception of her father working so hard that they could move to a neighbourhood with a high school for Black kids, everything is presented as if Katherine was the only person who put in the work or effort.

But I doubt she was. And again, I hate these narratives always focusing on individual achievement rather than showing how people build upon the support of others. That is a lesson we're sorely missing in English-language books, especially those coming out of the US.

This book has a frustrating story structure. It's cute in showing the ways in which the titular character Iggy has an interest in architecture and building initially, but the overarching lesson is a bit wonky? Especially when combined with the other books in the series, which can create a really off-putting shift in tone.

The first thing that I noticed is that Iggy, unlike the girls in later installments of the series, gets to be a bit rambunctious. He gets to be a little naughty up to a point (such as how his mom thinks it's so cute that he built a tower of diapers and glue... until she realises that he used dirty diapers). He's also shown to be allowed to inconvenience other people with little or no consequence.

But then he goes to school! And his teacher outright says that "architecture doesn't belong in grade two," which immediately makes her seem irrational. And honestly, it is. As a teacher, you should be supporting the interests of your students (within reason) and not denigrating them, even if they're not things you like. (I don't like maths, but I wouldn't just outright toss it in the bin in front of the kids who do.)

But probably because this teacher makes an appearance across the series, she has to remain remotely likable. (And also because we continually try to instill a reverence for teachers.) So the author gives her a backstory to explain why she'd behave the way she did, and it was because she was traumatised by being locked in an elevator. And while that is a thing that would cause someone to act in a manner that appears outwardly irrational, they just gloss on over it and continue the story in a manner that means the teacher needs to Just Get Over It.

So going on a school trip, they visit an island and the bridge they use to walk there collapses. The teacher faints, and the kids build a new bridge out of random stuff (like shoes). This proves the teacher wrong about architecture, proving that it has a use and value! So now the kids can learn about it in school because she was shown the power of a child being interested in architecture!

It sounds like it bothers me that an adult (especially a teacher) would be proven wrong, but I actually think books (among other media) should do better about teaching children that their opinions are valuable to society and that adults should take them into consideration without just flatly denying them. This book doesn't do this because there's no direct confrontation, and I feel like something in that vein would've been far better as a message than indirectly having to prove the teacher wrong.

This book does something that the others don't: It actually engages with a disability. Sort of.

The titular character, Aaron, struggles with dyslexia (though this isn't made explicit in the text of the story—it's only made explicit in the author's note). In the illustrations, it shows a lot of the words as being backwards and doesn't really engage with common forms of dyslexia.

It also doesn't do much with the characters other than have Aaron work really hard to overcome his struggle without having any of the characters doing much to collectively work with him. I know it's a book with text, but it's still reinforcing literacy as an end-all-be-all skill. This isn't to say literacy isn't useful, but it should try to highlight that our hyperfocus on literacy as being a core necessity to exist and how there are people who will struggle with that.

Perhaps it's because I am dyslexic that I find it infuriating. Perhaps it's because I had to struggle to learn coping mechanisms in a world not designed for people like me, and I don't want to see others endure that when we could shift the way the world works. But I'm not a fan of these texts for kids and their desires to constantly push a "we can do anything we want to overcome everything" narrative when that's not something we need to do.

We could have a different world where we all work together collectively and use all of our skills together, which would help us a range of different skills! We could have a bunch of different tools... But we continually write narratives for children that are purely unimaginative and reinforce that everyone should do everything for themselves, that we should persevere with minimal assistance or with very few strategies... It's so uncreative.

This book, like many others in the series, does the girl boss shit that I loathe so much. This one is even worse because... There are blatant lies in it! Like how corsetry was why people couldn't breathe (rather than them being ill-fitting or improperly/overly laced). It also claims that she showed women that they didn't need corsets or sequins to be stylish! Which... just feels like it's shaming other people's fashion choices, honestly.

Oh, and it casually ignores the fact that Coco Chanel was a Nazi informant who wasn't charged as a collaborator because Winston Churchill intervened? Like, that fact alone should've given the author (and publisher) pause... But it's fine! She was a celebrated fashion designer! Ugh.

Also, amusingly, portraying a girl in a school as being weird and different for liking to sew. When Chanel was a child and would've been of age, it would've been part of the school curriculum for girls to learn sewing and other domestic skills. Absolutely bonkers, especially when the mini biography at the end highlights this fact.

This book is okay. The theme isn't inherently terrible, as it basically tells children to not give up on their dreams. However, I think it's more that I'm tired of the constant resilience themes in children's literature, especially when it creates a fictional version of the self-help genre, which I kind of feel like this does.

This is present in the fact that the story doesn't show the titular character, Rosie, seeking help from anyone. She creates a "failure" invention (which she perceives as a failure because her uncle laughs at it, though he says that he loves it), and it doesn't even give her uncle a chance at any point to discuss with her the problem. She just gives up on things and hides them until her great-great aunt comes to stay, mentioning that she'd love to fly one day.

She tries her hand again at inventing something, fails, and is about to give up until her aunt expresses to her that failure is part of the process (which the book promptly undercuts as saying "the only true failure can come if you quit," reinforcing a bizarrely negative view of failure while recategorising failed experiments as... lessons learned?). I find it frustrating that the author refuses to de-stigmatise 'failure'; I find it bothersome that these books are presented in the function of children's self-help literature, teaching them to look for the answer on their own with the bare minimum assistance of outsiders.

Again, it's not inherently a bad story, but... I'm just tired of this one theme being the majority of children's literature. There has to be a diversity of thought, and this isn't it.

The book has an interesting structure, especially for kids. It's kind of structured in a way to have stories within stories. Not every chapter has this, but many of them do. A mother will be giving the protagonist advice or retelling her tales of growing up to her daughters, which punctuates part of the story. Sometimes there will be scenes of friends talking, but it slips into a small story from the friend of the protagonist. It's very cute, and I do like this structure a lot because it makes it kind of interesting.

The story is cute, and I think it's pretty interesting both as an early reader (for all kids) and as an introduction to how different cultures can be (for kids who aren't Chinese or Taiwanese). It's written as a form of autobiographical fiction, which is something that I find fun as a concept. In the author's note, she even says that people ask if it's true or not. There's a lot of discussion that's inspired from the author having grown up not really knowing where she belonged (a key line in one chapter has the protagonist question what she is if she's too American for Chinese people and too Chinese for American people). I think these are things that all kids should grapple with, both for themselves and for their peers.

Storywise, I don't like the excessive focus on 'being rich'. It focuses a lot on money, but the parents never really stop to tell the girl that wealth can be more than money. It'd be nice to see them say that it can be having a community, having a safe and caring family, having opportunities. It'd be so much better to see something directly contradicting the constant materialism present in childhood.

The other thing that I am not a fan of in this book are the names and how confusing it really feels, which I think comes from the fact that I have lived in Taiwan before so I have engaged with Taiwanese names and how they are transliterated into the English alphabet. For example, in the book, a Taiwanese-American girl named Melody interrogates the protagonist (who is named for and based on the author) about why she goes by 'Grace' at school and 'Pacy' at home. As I'm reading, I'm trying to figure out what characters would fit the name 'Pacy' or even which pronunciation would be accurate (pa-si, pa-shi, pei-si, pei-shi). I did try looking up what the author's name would be in Chinese characters because of this curiosity, but I was unable to find it. The same is true of her sister 'Lissy', which I can't figure out from that specific transliteration.

I think it's also confusing because I can't tell if the author is inferring that the friend (Melody) and her brothers all have one name because they only have and use their 'American' first names or if she's trying to imply that Melody, Felix, and Benji would be names commonly recognised in Taiwan. This happens again with the chapter about her new baby cousin, Albert. My primary issue around their names is that it's weirdly unclear for the point its trying to make.

I would feel uncomfortable giving this to children because it's a book of mixed messaging. The protagonist is a girl who does things that are largely kind of rude (stapling her brother's hair to his pillow, intentionally putting a fly in ice cubes, gluing her brother's slippers to the floor), but it's framed in a way that feels like it's trying to make you feel bad that she can't? Which I don't think was the intention, but the failure to really highlight the negative consequences of the behaviours gives it that feeling.

There are two points where the girl says she's "not allowed to walk backwards (to school/from school) anymore," and besides the sign saying "don't walk"... it doesn't show much about how it can be bad for you. I'm not looking for there to be a scene of the girl getting hit by a car, but it just feels like a weird quip.

The other thing I don't like is the ending? Where if she was just continuing to be really obnoxious and trying to figure out new misadventures, it also wouldn't suffer from the awkward framing as much. It'd at least frame everything as being annoying and her either as not recognising it as being obnoxious or as her knowing these things bother people but trying them anyway. But the ending says that she's "allowed to say the opposite of what she means forevermore," with the illustration of her hiding a stapler behind her back while hugging her mother and saying "I'm sorry." This is just... really off? Because again, it relies so heavily on reading it with someone else who will point out why this is really negative behaviour, especially as it shows that she doesn't feel bad for any of the pain her brother or mother have gone through in the previous examples.

Perhaps useful for teaching kids good and/or safe behaviours if you read it with them? But I think there are better ways of doing that, and I don't think this is a good book to read on their own.

Oh, it also feels like the story is drawing from Dennis the Menace but isn't as amusing because the acts aren't fleshed out and just seem more bothersome.

Additional thoughts found here: eldritch.cafe/@whatanerd/111476908098590779

This book can be quite fun to do with kids, and it's pretty enjoyable as a quasi-story with puzzles in the middle. The logic puzzles are sometimes difficult to understand, especially for kids who may just be learning English or starting to learn to read. They're a bit verbose and can be quite hard to follow, with some aspects not being very clear.

There have been a lot of times where I've had kids just tell me that the answer "could be anything," and I can't quite disagree because I felt the same way. But the maths problems (which are the first four chapters) are where this book really shines. They're not overly complex, and they are possible. There are moments where it feels like the answer could be anything, but if you try to work it out? You'll realise that it's not. That part feels much more solid, while the rest just feels unnecessarily frustrating.

Still cute, still amusing, and can still be useful.

This is another book that my students reminded me about. It's written in a very rhythmic way, ensuring that you try to follow its beat. I think it's pretty good up until the whole "saying grace" part, but that's because I'm personally not a fan of including religion in children's books (and that's largely because of the oversized influence of religion on a person's life before they're even prepared to decide for themselves).

I'm also mentioning that inclusion because I think it's important for people to know before going into the book, since that's also a potential conversation someone might want to have with any kids they read this with.

It's also fun because it includes a quick recipe for bibimbap, along with a mention that the recipe is as unique as either what's available or what each Korean family includes in it. I think that's quite nice. More kids books should encourage additional skills by including recipes and how to make them with adults in their lives.