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A review by rennegade
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina
5.0
Anecdote time!
On a normal day in 7th grade, I was on the bus ride to school when the girl behind me started poking me in the neck with a pencil. Hard. I leaned forward at first, confused about what was happening and thinking maybe it was accidental. It continued. Suddenly something hard (a book?) connected with the back of my head. The only person on the bus that I talked to was my friend who was sitting next to me, so I knew without turning around that it was a stranger. I could hear her and her seatmate giggling as something else hit me in the head. I let it go on for a while before I became enraged and lost it. Without turning around to see who was tormenting me, I swung my purse backwards and hit the person as hard as I could.
Big mistake.
For the rest of the bus ride, I was being hit, poked with pencils, getting my hair yanked, and hearing whispers about how I was going to get my ass kicked. I made a beeline for the school as soon as the doors opened, but it was no use. The girl and a couple of her friends surrounded me in the hallway. They started kicking, pushing, punching - all sorts of fun things. I did not recognize a single one of them.
They finally left me alone and I limped along to my class. I was crying so hard that my teacher sent me to guidance, where I told the counselor what happened. They pulled up surveillance footage from the bus and hallway and pinpointed the ringleader. She was brought to the principal's office and forced to apologize to me (amongst other punishments). I hardly acknowledged it, furious and hurt and confused as to why a complete stranger would suddenly decide she wanted to make me so miserable.
The premise of Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass is similar to my own middle school experience. Piddy Sanchez is bewildered to find that a girl she hardly knows has invented some invisible feud that can only be solved with an ass-kicking.
I absolutely loved this book. It perfectly captured one of the hazards that many people face whilst navigating those treacherous teen years. The author seamlessly wove the stories of Piddy's school woes and her budding feelings for an old neighbor and her strenuous relationship with her mother. I've known many Piddys and Yaquis during my own middle and high school experiences, so this book felt incredibly true-to-life.
I recently attended a panel at the Virginia Library Association's annual conference about reluctant readers in the young adult sector, and I had this pleasure of seeing Meg Medina speak. I had picked up her book a couple of months back but got so busy that it got pushed to the side. Hearing her speak inspired me to pick it back up, and I devoured it in a day or so.
This is a fantastic book for teens of all reading interest levels to read. It does not sugarcoat the pitfalls o the teenage years, and it presents itself as a completely relatable piece of fiction. I definitely recommend it!
On a normal day in 7th grade, I was on the bus ride to school when the girl behind me started poking me in the neck with a pencil. Hard. I leaned forward at first, confused about what was happening and thinking maybe it was accidental. It continued. Suddenly something hard (a book?) connected with the back of my head. The only person on the bus that I talked to was my friend who was sitting next to me, so I knew without turning around that it was a stranger. I could hear her and her seatmate giggling as something else hit me in the head. I let it go on for a while before I became enraged and lost it. Without turning around to see who was tormenting me, I swung my purse backwards and hit the person as hard as I could.
Big mistake.
For the rest of the bus ride, I was being hit, poked with pencils, getting my hair yanked, and hearing whispers about how I was going to get my ass kicked. I made a beeline for the school as soon as the doors opened, but it was no use. The girl and a couple of her friends surrounded me in the hallway. They started kicking, pushing, punching - all sorts of fun things. I did not recognize a single one of them.
They finally left me alone and I limped along to my class. I was crying so hard that my teacher sent me to guidance, where I told the counselor what happened. They pulled up surveillance footage from the bus and hallway and pinpointed the ringleader. She was brought to the principal's office and forced to apologize to me (amongst other punishments). I hardly acknowledged it, furious and hurt and confused as to why a complete stranger would suddenly decide she wanted to make me so miserable.
The premise of Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass is similar to my own middle school experience. Piddy Sanchez is bewildered to find that a girl she hardly knows has invented some invisible feud that can only be solved with an ass-kicking.
I absolutely loved this book. It perfectly captured one of the hazards that many people face whilst navigating those treacherous teen years. The author seamlessly wove the stories of Piddy's school woes and her budding feelings for an old neighbor and her strenuous relationship with her mother. I've known many Piddys and Yaquis during my own middle and high school experiences, so this book felt incredibly true-to-life.
I recently attended a panel at the Virginia Library Association's annual conference about reluctant readers in the young adult sector, and I had this pleasure of seeing Meg Medina speak. I had picked up her book a couple of months back but got so busy that it got pushed to the side. Hearing her speak inspired me to pick it back up, and I devoured it in a day or so.
This is a fantastic book for teens of all reading interest levels to read. It does not sugarcoat the pitfalls o the teenage years, and it presents itself as a completely relatable piece of fiction. I definitely recommend it!