Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I just finished (as in on the couch, just now) Kat Fajardo’s Miss Quinces as a possible Christmas gift for my 14-year-old; after reading it, however, I’ve decided to donate it to our local retirement center for a resident to give as a gift instead. (Our local congregation collects gifts for that purpose every year.) It isn’t that it wasn’t good–I was thoroughly engaged–but it is incredibly important to me that my children speak nicely and respectfully to each other, and I didn’t love Sue’s older sister’s treatment of her in the first half of the book. It eventually shifted, which I appreciated, but since the child I was considering gifting it to has a past history of NOT speaking nicely to a younger sibling, well…she’s a lot better now, but why have her reread and reread something that might encourage backsliding?

Still, Miss Quinces is a fun story of a NOT-girly girl trying to cope with family and cultural expectations, not to mention the frustration of not feeling fully American while not feeling Latine enough either.* Sue’s relationship with her grandmother is fantastic, and her extended family is loving and supportive, in their own hectic (and slightly biased) way. And reading the author’s note offers further insight into how the story came to be, which definitely adds to the reading experience. I did struggle, however, with how abrupt the transitions in the book–especially those regarding attitude shifts–are. Ultimately, I liked Miss Quinces and I put it on hold at the library for my own girlies; it doesn’t need to live in my house forever, however, and hence–donation.

* By the way, I did like how the color of the text indicated the language being spoken; that’s an excellent way to tell the story you want to tell without frustrating readers with no real second language skills!