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nuevecuervos's review against another edition
2.0
Alright, I'm calling it. It's taken MONTHS to get halfway and I want to slap every character but Amanda and probably ber BFF. I was reading this with my six-year-old, who loves long, plotful stories and has a pretty big vocabulary for her age, and she has gravitated away from this book as well; I'll see the half-read book and say, "Oh! We should get back to that!" and she will look briefly excited and say, "Yeah!" ...and then go back to pretty much any other book first.
Good things about this book: The protagonist is an unrepentently smart nerd who loves bugs, her BFF is an equally nerdy dude and their friendship is pretty great; the superpowers are fun, and the Dragonfly and Megawoman mythos is a fun hook. The vocabulary is absolutely WAY above most middle school levels, and as someone who enjoys unpretentious use of large words and complex turns of phrase, I LOVE it. I spent a lot of time enjoying Harper's writing style.
Ok, here's why we're stopping:
1) First, Emily is an ENORMOUS shitbird, and I'm not sorry to swear about it. Like, yes, kids can be absolutely horrible. As a child that was bullied relentlessly through literally every year of school, I am paaaainfully aware of this. HOWEVER, what the everlovong hell is this, "Our parents are besties, so they make us hang out... and neither one of them is willing to do ANYTHING to stop it." crap? Just, no. My kid is tight friends with the children of two of my close friends, and you'd better believe if one of them did this, I'd be like, sit your kid's bratty ass down and fix that shit, Karen, because my kid absolutely does not deserve this treatment. Part of it seems like moms are blissfully ignoring the extent of the problem, which is an awesome trope. Ugh. Extreme parenting fail. Moving on.
1a) And that's not to say that Emily is not salvageable; Kids change and mature, she may actually become not horrible one day. But dude. Do your growing and changing FAR from my kid. Far. Preferably in a therapist's office.
2) The main badasses are all women, but all of their support characters are dudes, without whom they would be lost, and they seem to have veerrrry little agency. Amanda just... follows along this path of hapless heroism, following whatever new rule seems to be in place. Mom disappears? Poppie walks in and is like, your mom would never have made it without my rules and clearly neither can you. I buy that all superheroes could benefit from Guy in a Chair, but it's a little too much support here.
Also? HE CAN EXPERTLY SEW A SUPER WARDROBE IN AN HOUR. Are you, like me, someone who also owns more than one sewing machine and has been known to make many amazing creative things? Because if you are, you and I both know that an hour would be about enough time to decide on what fabric, make a pattern and maybe, if you're very lucky, cut the pieces out. More like, six to ten hours of sewing and swearing and seam ripping and then MAYBE you get "omg, thank you it's BEAAAAUTIFUL". Maybe.
3) Aforementioned vocabulary, and this one kills me. I liked it; kid, not so much. There are some really dense paragraphs that saw her sort of drift away into space, only to come back for the bug fact or for an action. Often when we read books that are above her level, we stop to discuss words, skipping over some where the context was enough, with the assumption that we'll get there in a couple of years, nbd. This one has a lot of that though; like if I stopped for every dense paragraph, we would never get through. And we have literally not gotten through as it is!
4) Finally, I'm not sure I care. I'm going to go skim the end, but I have no burning desire to find out what happens.
Anyway, bottom line, this book is not terrible and the premise is good, but the cartoonish disregard for bullying is extremely dated, and the main character could use some more opportunities to make her own decisions and come to her own conclusions.
Good things about this book: The protagonist is an unrepentently smart nerd who loves bugs, her BFF is an equally nerdy dude and their friendship is pretty great; the superpowers are fun, and the Dragonfly and Megawoman mythos is a fun hook. The vocabulary is absolutely WAY above most middle school levels, and as someone who enjoys unpretentious use of large words and complex turns of phrase, I LOVE it. I spent a lot of time enjoying Harper's writing style.
Ok, here's why we're stopping:
1) First, Emily is an ENORMOUS shitbird, and I'm not sorry to swear about it. Like, yes, kids can be absolutely horrible. As a child that was bullied relentlessly through literally every year of school, I am paaaainfully aware of this. HOWEVER, what the everlovong hell is this, "Our parents are besties, so they make us hang out... and neither one of them is willing to do ANYTHING to stop it." crap? Just, no. My kid is tight friends with the children of two of my close friends, and you'd better believe if one of them did this, I'd be like, sit your kid's bratty ass down and fix that shit, Karen, because my kid absolutely does not deserve this treatment. Part of it seems like moms are blissfully ignoring the extent of the problem, which is an awesome trope. Ugh. Extreme parenting fail. Moving on.
1a) And that's not to say that Emily is not salvageable; Kids change and mature, she may actually become not horrible one day. But dude. Do your growing and changing FAR from my kid. Far. Preferably in a therapist's office.
2) The main badasses are all women, but all of their support characters are dudes, without whom they would be lost, and they seem to have veerrrry little agency. Amanda just... follows along this path of hapless heroism, following whatever new rule seems to be in place. Mom disappears? Poppie walks in and is like, your mom would never have made it without my rules and clearly neither can you. I buy that all superheroes could benefit from Guy in a Chair, but it's a little too much support here.
Also? HE CAN EXPERTLY SEW A SUPER WARDROBE IN AN HOUR. Are you, like me, someone who also owns more than one sewing machine and has been known to make many amazing creative things? Because if you are, you and I both know that an hour would be about enough time to decide on what fabric, make a pattern and maybe, if you're very lucky, cut the pieces out. More like, six to ten hours of sewing and swearing and seam ripping and then MAYBE you get "omg, thank you it's BEAAAAUTIFUL". Maybe.
3) Aforementioned vocabulary, and this one kills me. I liked it; kid, not so much. There are some really dense paragraphs that saw her sort of drift away into space, only to come back for the bug fact or for an action. Often when we read books that are above her level, we stop to discuss words, skipping over some where the context was enough, with the assumption that we'll get there in a couple of years, nbd. This one has a lot of that though; like if I stopped for every dense paragraph, we would never get through. And we have literally not gotten through as it is!
4) Finally, I'm not sure I care. I'm going to go skim the end, but I have no burning desire to find out what happens.
Anyway, bottom line, this book is not terrible and the premise is good, but the cartoonish disregard for bullying is extremely dated, and the main character could use some more opportunities to make her own decisions and come to her own conclusions.
estellabelle92's review against another edition
4.0
Once I got past the middle school angst, this book provided a rollicking, funny good time. Amanda, aka Bug Girl, is a pure geeky delight as is her friend, Vincent, who has the best fashion sense.
Lots of fun along with surreptitious science facts.
You like bugs? Superheroes? Good vs. Evil? Then Bug Girl is for you!
Lots of fun along with surreptitious science facts.
You like bugs? Superheroes? Good vs. Evil? Then Bug Girl is for you!
rachelsayshello's review against another edition
5.0
I'm usually not a reader of middle-grade fiction, but that didn't stop me from loving Bug Girl. It's very silly and very fun and perfect summer reading. Bug Girl and her pal Vincent have adorable chemistry and the mean-girl details of Bug Girl's relationship with Emily are spot on (the characters might verge into the caricature category if there wasn't such truth in the details).
I'm going to foist this into the hands of every little reader who might be hiding a secret superhero identity.
I'm going to foist this into the hands of every little reader who might be hiding a secret superhero identity.
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