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Summary
Summary
Who would have thought being smart could be so hard (and so funny)?
Millicent Kwan is having a bad summer. Her fellow high school students hate her for setting the curve. Her fellow 11-year-olds hate her for going to high school. And her mother has arranged for her to tutor Stanford Wong, the poster boy for Chinese geekdom. But then Millie meets Emily. Emily doesn't know Millicent's IQ score. She actually thinks Millie is cool. And if Millie can hide her awards, ignore her grandmother's advice, swear her parents to silence, blackmail Stanford, and keep all her lies straight, she just might make her first friend.
What's it going to take? Sheer genius.
Author Notes
Lisa Yee was born in Los Angeles and is the co-owner and creative director of Magic Pencil Studios. Wrote Millicent Min, Girl Genius, which won the prestigious Sid Fleischman Humor Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-Pity poor Millicent Min, a 12-year-old girl genius, whose academic brilliance and classroom performance are a hindrance when it comes to making friends and fitting in with her peers. While attending summer school at the local college (as the youngest student in an elective poetry class), puzzling over the rules and regulations of volleyball, and trying to understand how anyone could be interested in "stupid Stanford Wong" as a boyfriend, Millie learns that there's more to life than logic, and that the "right" answer doesn't always make the most sense. Keiko Agena strikes just the right tone of self-deprecating humor in her narration of the book by Lisa Yee (Scholastic, 2003), effectively conveying both Millie's intellectual precocity as well as her social ineptness as she tries, ultimately unsuccessfully, to hide her high IQ from her new best friend Emily. Funny, poignant, and believable, Agena's rendition of this engaging middle school novel is a treat.-Cindy Lombardo, Tuscarawus County Public Library, New Philadelphia, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Readers don't have to share Millicent Min's IQ to empathize with the 11-year-old genius narrator featured in this energetic first novel. Millicent breezes through high school and college classes, but when it comes to making friends her own age, she's at a loss. In an attempt to give her daughter "a more normal and well-rounded childhood," Millicent's mother signs her up for a volleyball league. Even though the narrator abhors the idea of playing a team sport ("As I see it, my childhood is round enough," she remarks), going to practice does give her the opportunity to form a solid camaraderie with new-girl-in-town Emily, who hates volleyball as much as Millicent does. Not wanting to jeopardize her precious new friendship, Millicent keeps her mental capabilities a secret; as might be expected, deception soon leads to disaster. When Emily turns her back on Millicent for pretending to be someone she's not, Millicent must solve a problem more difficult than any math equation or test question. How can she regain Emily's trust? Millicent's unique personality a blend of rationality and na?vet? makes for some hilarious moments as the young protagonist interacts with a cast of colorful characters including her athletic, down-to-earth mother, her laid-back father, and her beloved grandmother, who borrows sage advice from the television show, Kung Fu. Yee re-examines the terms "smart" and "dumb," while offering a heartfelt story full of wit. Ages 9-12. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) Millicent Min may be a girl genius, but outside of academics she's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Granted, it's a little awkward being the only eleven-year-old in the eleventh grade, but Millicent's social cluelessness is (like her mental prowess) off the charts. Readers will laugh and groan at her ultra-geeky efforts to fit in and will share her relief when she finally does make a friend. Both girls have been forced by their mothers to join the summer volleyball league; Emily is supposed to ""get coordinated and meet new people, blah, blah, blah,"" while Millicent, according to the school psychologist, is in need of a ""more normal and well-rounded childhood."" She does feel normal when Emily befriends her, so she lies about being a genius and tries to act like a regular kid--not easy for someone whose whole life experience has been highly irregular (e.g., Millicent's thoughts on volleyball: ""[It] reminds me of kindergarten--something I tried but was just not suited for""). In Yee's smartly funny debut novel, the young narrator's voice--amusingly formal, ridiculously rational, stubbornly objective--is sustained throughout, even when Millicent begins (after being outed as a genius and taught a lesson about friendship and trust) to learn how to let loose (a little) and have fun. An interesting variant on the unreliable narrator, Millicent often uses her scholarly, impartial voice as a cover for her true feelings; even nongenius readers will see through her--and will feel a little smarter for it. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
From Yee's first sentence--"I have been accused of being anal retentive, an overachiever, and a compulsive perfectionist, like those are bad things"--this perfectly captures the humor, unique voice, and dilemma of Millicent Min, its wunderkind heroine. For while there is no doubt that Millicent, an 11-year-old entering 12th grade, is a genius, her social and athletic skills leave something to be desired. In an effort to ameliorate the situation, her parents sign her up for a girls' volleyball league. There Millicent meets Emily, a potential friend, and to seem more normal decides to lie about her academic ability. Comic complications multiply when Millicent's parents induce her to tutor the son of a family friend, who also likes Emily and is delighted to let her think that he's the one doing the tutoring. Funny, charming, and heartwarming, with something to say about the virtues of trust and truth telling, this deserves an A. (Fiction. 9-13) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 4-6. Certified genius Millicent Min has problems. Sure, her parents have finally consented to let her take a college poetry class over the summer (even though Millie is not yet 12). But it turns out college kids aren't her peers--they're as dumb and lazy as her nemesis, Stanford. If Millie can just keep her brilliance a secret from Emily, Millie's first real friend, and manage to keep Emily and Stanford from smooching (ick!), things might turn out OK. Yee's first novel examines child prodigies from a refreshing angle, allowing nongeniuses to laugh appreciatively at the ups and downs of being a whiz kid. Millie's pretentious voice grows tiresome after a while, but Yee does an excellent job of showing both Millie's grown-up brain and her decidedly middle-school problems. Even if they can't relate to her mastery of Latin, most kids will readily follow as Millie struggles through a world where she's smarter than everyone but still sometimes clueless. --John Green Copyright 2003 Booklist