This Month's Book Reviews

A little book that shows that geniuses have problems
just as the rest of us do

Millicent Min has an IQ that is off the charts. At eleven years of age, she is ready to enter her senior year in high school in the fall. Just for the fun of it, she's taking a college course the summer before. Within a few days she has alienated the college kids in the class because she works circles around them in the course. And that's her problem. Kids her age think she is a freak. Older students despise her because this little kid "raises the curve" for them. Her parents are anxious because Millicent has no friends or social life.

The obvious solution to Millicent's problem appears to be to convince any potential friends that she isn't a genius but is totally normal. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. To arrive at the strategy is one thing, but to carry it out is another matter. And that provides the content of this little paperback novel. Lisa Yee, author of "Millicent Min, Girl Genius," has written a hilarious account of the problems an eleven-year-old genius experiences in today's world.

As a visually impaired boy struggles for self-identity,
he uncovers a secret

A Florida county where tangerine growing had once been the dominant industry provides a setting for a visually-impaired twelve-year-old to convince his parents and others that he isn't a loser just because he wears thick glasses. Middle-school aged Paul Fisher had always lived in the shadow of Erik, his high school football star older bother. His parents, especially his dad, failed to appreciate Paul and relegated him to second class status behind his brother.

While dealing with the bullying tactics of his brother and other kids, Paul quietly establishes himself as a better-than-average soccer player. His efforts to help a Hispanic family save their crop of a new type of tangerines establish that Paul is a boy with heroic characteristics. As the events unfold in the story, the bullying traits of Erik, the older brother, are brought to everyone's attention, including that of the two boys' parents. The mystery as to how his eyes were damaged when he was young was also solved for Paul.

Girls living in a children's group home
try to feel "special"

Author Frances O'Rourk Dowell in her award-winning book "Where I'd Like to Be" tells a sympathetic story of how girls try to keep a positive self-image while being passed through foster homes and finally placed in a large group home.

The main character is eleven-year-old Maddie Byers. We see her searching for a best friend her own age while she works hard at being protective of a fragile six-year-old boy housed in another part of the Home.

The events in the story are not high adventure, but a young reader can relate quickly to how the characters are all seeking to establish an identity for themselves. The author is not critical of those who operate large children's homes, but she doesn't glamorize the experience of the children in those homes either. If there is any message at all, it is that each individual comes up with his or her own coping mechanisms. The bottom line is they are just kids.

A gripping adventure story for boys that is set in Alaska

Author Will Hobbs is known for his novels directed to pre-teen and younger teen-aged boys. "Wild Man Island" has as its main character fourteen-year-old Andy Galloway, who, while on a whale-watching kayaking trip to Alaska with other teenagers, goes off on his own to visit the site where his archeologist father had been killed a few years before, An unexpected storm makes it impossible for him to make his way back to join the group. While marooned on what was supposed to be an uninhabited island, Andy has to make use of every survival skill he had ever heard of in order to keep alive. Among other things he has to cope with are potential hypothermia, near starvation, and roaming bears and wolves.

Andy is astonished to find a wild-looking, bearded man living on the island. Clearly, at first, the man doesn't want anything to do with Andy, although he stops short of threatening the boy. It takes considerable effort on Andy's part to establish that the mysterious wild man is really an archeologist who has chosen to live as primitive man might have lived at an earlier time in the geographical area. A young reader while caught up in the adventure story will learn something about archeology and ecology. .