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devonelise17 's review for:

Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix
4.0

Found this childhood favorite recently and really loved re-reading it.

It’s not perfect though. In the class I taught called Disney: Gender, Race, and Empire, students were asked to re-imagine a folktale of their choosing which incorporated theories we’d discussed in class. This reminded me very much of those projects— both in the sometimes shallow critique of patriarchy which turns into a display of internalized misogyny and the other times lovely exploration of nuances of healthy relationships. The major disappointment was realizing how rampant the fatphobia is in the story. As I re-discover childhood favorites it is no longer a mystery to me how I learned this same message.

Still a fave? Absolutely.