Millicent Min, Girl Genius By Lisa Yee

Reference: Yee, Lisa.  Millicent Min, Girl Genius.  New York: Scholastic Press, 2003.

                Lisa Yee’s novel, Millicent Min, Girl Genius, is an amusing and slightly sad story about an eleven year old girl genius’s summer before her senior year of high school.  Millicent is a deliciously awkward character that prides herself on her academic achievement, going as far as asking her teachers and professors for extra work.  However, her intelligence does cover all aspects of her life, which can be seen by the lack of friendship and fun in her life.  Millicent’s summer of “fun”, taking a college poetry class, is challenged when her mother signs her up for volleyball camp and forces her to tutor her arch nemesis Stanford Wong.   The novel describes Millicent’s attempts to appear normal to her new friend, Emily, and learn how to become a normal kid. 

                I thought this novel was an amazingly fun read, while still touching on some issues with the development of adolescent identity.  I am not going to lie, at some points of the novel I was very sad to see how Millicent was taken advantage of and ostracized by her peers.  I felt that this novel would be a good novel to talk to students about bullying.  This was not a difficult read, but it did have some amazing vocabulary words for students.  I would recommend this book as an individual silent reading, because I feel that some students would have trouble connecting with the story.  Overall this novel was a fun read but I would not recommend this novel as a unit novel.