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A review by fairytalerue
My Life in the Fish Tank by Barbara Dee
5.0
this book......... i almost cried. it perfectly encapsulated the middle school experience.
what i liked
- i related to gabriel quite a bit (i don't have bipolar, but i do have some serious mental illnesses and connected with him)
- zinny was such a sweetheart <3 she felt like a realistic 12 year old, and i loved her so much. 12 year old rue would have been best friends with her
- the lunch clubbbb ~ it was so cute and i wanted to be friends with *everyone* in the lunch club
- the sibling relationships were also so wonderfully done. aiden made me smile; all of his 'how to' ideas were so fun to read about (: and scarlet was....... complex. i liked her though. and gabriel?? i loved the flashbacks with him, he seemed like a sweet older brother.
- AND OH MY WORD THE CRAYFRISH PLOTLINE WAS SO FUN I LEARNED SO MANY FUN FACTS ABOUT CRAYFISH IT WAS AMAZING
what i didn't like
- the feminist agenda...... i'm not typically one to be bothered by feminist stuff. as a kid, i was essentially a feminist (i was that kid who would argue with my history teachers about the fact that we never got to learn about girls....... i made my 6th grade history teacher add a female role in a play she wrote for our class. just for me *facepalm*) but the feminist stuff in here (most of it coming from scarlet) just annoyed me. it felt unneeded, and quite frankly sexist. she spent the first half of the book just ranting about how girls are better than guys, and i just- no. i'm all for conversations about gender equality, but when you're harassing one gender, i get bothered. that's just not right.
cw: a side lgbtq character (it's mentioned once), quite a few uses of the Lord's name in vain, one use of what the h*ll
all in all, this was a wonderful read and i would recommend it to anyone who's looking for a fun clean middle grade read <3
what i liked
- i related to gabriel quite a bit (i don't have bipolar, but i do have some serious mental illnesses and connected with him)
- zinny was such a sweetheart <3 she felt like a realistic 12 year old, and i loved her so much. 12 year old rue would have been best friends with her
- the lunch clubbbb ~ it was so cute and i wanted to be friends with *everyone* in the lunch club
- the sibling relationships were also so wonderfully done. aiden made me smile; all of his 'how to' ideas were so fun to read about (: and scarlet was....... complex. i liked her though. and gabriel?? i loved the flashbacks with him, he seemed like a sweet older brother.
- AND OH MY WORD THE CRAYFRISH PLOTLINE WAS SO FUN I LEARNED SO MANY FUN FACTS ABOUT CRAYFISH IT WAS AMAZING
what i didn't like
- the feminist agenda...... i'm not typically one to be bothered by feminist stuff. as a kid, i was essentially a feminist (i was that kid who would argue with my history teachers about the fact that we never got to learn about girls....... i made my 6th grade history teacher add a female role in a play she wrote for our class. just for me *facepalm*) but the feminist stuff in here (most of it coming from scarlet) just annoyed me. it felt unneeded, and quite frankly sexist. she spent the first half of the book just ranting about how girls are better than guys, and i just- no. i'm all for conversations about gender equality, but when you're harassing one gender, i get bothered. that's just not right.
cw: a side lgbtq character (it's mentioned once), quite a few uses of the Lord's name in vain, one use of what the h*ll
all in all, this was a wonderful read and i would recommend it to anyone who's looking for a fun clean middle grade read <3