Middle Grade Review: May Amelia

Today, I'm doing two books at once. I listened to the audio back-to-back, repeating the first book, which I read several years ago, in order to have the context for the second book.

   

Titles: Our Only May Amelia and The Trouble with May Amelia
Author: Jennifer L. Holm; read by Emmy Rossum & Maria Dalbotten, respectively.
Publishers: Harper Collins 2001, and Atheneum, 2011. Audio editions by Listening Library, 2007 and 2012.
Source: Library

Summary:

Our Only May Amelia: May Amelia struggles along as the only girl in the whole pioneering settlement along the Nasel River in Washington State. Having seven brothers doesn't help, nor does the fact that in spite of all this, everyone somehow expects her to be a  proper young lady. But she's looking forward to that changing, with the birth of a new baby in the family! It might even be enough to compensate for Grandma's moving in with them.

The Trouble with May Amelia: A year along, or thereabouts, May is still struggling with expectations for her, and her father's belief that girls aren't good for much. When he pick her to translate for him when an agent comes calling, May's excited to prove her worth. When things go bad, though, she's the one in trouble, and the whole family is in danger of coming apart unless she can find a solution.

Review:

First off, the audio versions were both excellent. Both readers did a good job, in a very similar fashion--in spite of listening one right after the other, I had to check to see that there were different readers.  

I enjoyed these stories. I like historical fiction, and I like tales of settling the American West, and in this case, it was even about my home state (Washington), though a part of the state I've not much visited. Still, I am always amazed that anyone managed to stick it out there through even one dark, soggy winter back before the days of central heating!

Despite the ten-year gap between when Ms. Holm wrote the first and second books, they hang together well, and the characters seem consistent. I like May Amelia for being a tomboy, and sticking to that. She doesn't convert to girliness in order to win her father's respect--she fights her way to that by a harder route. I like the mix of maturity and childishness that characterizes May Amelia and the younger boys. It struck me as being about right--kids had to take on responsibility under those conditions, but it didn't stop them being kids, and having fun (or skiving off from work, for that matter).

Recommendation:

The stories are engaging as stories, and the author's understanding of the setting makes them better. I recommend the books to anyone from about age 9 up (there are some things that may be hard for younger kids to deal with) who likes to read about how people lived in other times and places. Or, for any girl who struggles with expectations of what a girl "ought" to do and be.

Full Disclosure: I checked both books out of my digital library, and received nothing from the writer or publishers in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

YA Graphic Novel: Tomboy

Title: Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir
Author: Liz Prince
Publisher: Zest Books, 2014. 255 pages
Source: Library

Summary: 
This graphic novel explains what it was like for Liz Prince growing up "in the middle"--not a pink sort of girl, but not "one of the guys" either. It wasn't easy even in grade school, but the book really focuses on the struggles that hit in Junior High and High School.


My Review: 
I plucked this book from the cart while I was shelving at the library, because the title caught my eye, me being an unreformed tomboy and all. I'm glad I did. It was a fascinating look at gender roles and expectations in our society.

Liz Prince is about 20 years younger than I am, so I expected that our experiences would be different (I was/am also a little different sort of tomboy than she was, because hey, we are all unique!). What I didn't expect was to find that she had a harder time than I did. And I don't think that's just because I was okay with occasionally putting on a dress for a special occasion. I think it's because we were more open to girls and women being themselves in the 60s and 70s than we were in the 80s and 90s--and what about now?

Liz seems to have taken a lot of grief from gradeschool on up for "dressing like a boy." Now, I admit that I don't know what that would have been like, because I was a 1st grader in a time and place when it simply wasn't done. I wore a skirt to school (and changed to jeans the second I got home), until about 2nd grade, when we moved to a place where pants were acceptable (and Dad wasn't the minister anymore, so no one was looking so closely at me). I went ahead and "acted like a boy" regardless, as did most of my friends; we skinned a lot of bare knees. Liz seems to have been surrounded by girls who got very girly from a very young age.

In high school, where she was shunned for wearing (boy's) jeans and no makeup, I finally was free to dress as I pleased, and wore jeans and tee shirts and didn't even own a skirt for years. (Note: I still wear jeans and Tees and no makeup, and I haven't worn a skirt in years). Maybe it was different then because we were all rebelling against a very different generation? In any case, one thing that never seemed to come up were the accusations of lesbianism. Prince faced those just for hanging out with a friend who also dressed like a boy. My classmates might not have known the word.

The weird thing is, I think it was easier to be a tomboy in my generation because people were less aware of all the gender options. For Prince, being a tomboy seemed to require questioning her sexuality, even at a young age. For me and my friends, we just wanted to be boys because they had all the good adventures (in the books we read). And we wanted to wear jeans because they were more suited to running around and climbing trees (plus: pockets). We wore boys' clothes (literally in my case: I wore my brothers' hand-me-downs) and played boys' games, but we didn't try to look like boys. Most of us wore our hair long (because our mothers all cut and curled theirs?).

I've wandered from the review here, but there is method to my madness. The book made me think about gender roles and being a tomboy and how kids (and society) treat other kids who don't conform. And that, I think, is a large part of the point (as well as letting girls who maybe don't fit the standard model know that they are not alone, and that it's okay--and maybe even that not liking skirts doesn't mean you aren't heterosexual?). That is what made this a really good book.

Recommendation:
I recommend this book for everyone who has ever struggled against gender roles, or thought about it, or teased someone who didn't fit the mold, or thought about teasing...you get the picture. I think it's kind of an important book for our teens, and probably for the rest of us, to read. It only took me an hour or two--well worth the time!


Full Disclosure: I checked Tomboy out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."