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A review by crowinator
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina
4.0
Actual rating: 3.5 stars.
I can think of few novels that I'd want to read less than a contemporary novel about a Latina teen struggling to cope with being bullied at her new school (it doesn't help that the title is horrible), but this is one of those times when I'm glad for assigned reading. It's so rare that a book like this manages to be so straight-forward without getting didactic; so authentic about the claustrophobic, trapped feeling of being bullied without painting a hopeless picture or making me cry my eyes out with horror; and has such a realistic ending (I'm looking at you for those last two, Leverage). It would be an interesting to pair with Everybody Sees the Ants in a book discussion group, because even though they are quite different (this one has no magical dreams or Greek-chorus ants, for example), there are parallels in how the bullied students learn to speak out and how the bullying is dealt with by adults and on a school administration level. There really is no one-size-fits-all answer to bullying, but neither is bullying an unsolvable problem, and this novel balances both truths well.
I can think of few novels that I'd want to read less than a contemporary novel about a Latina teen struggling to cope with being bullied at her new school (it doesn't help that the title is horrible), but this is one of those times when I'm glad for assigned reading. It's so rare that a book like this manages to be so straight-forward without getting didactic; so authentic about the claustrophobic, trapped feeling of being bullied without painting a hopeless picture or making me cry my eyes out with horror; and has such a realistic ending (I'm looking at you for those last two, Leverage). It would be an interesting to pair with Everybody Sees the Ants in a book discussion group, because even though they are quite different (this one has no magical dreams or Greek-chorus ants, for example), there are parallels in how the bullied students learn to speak out and how the bullying is dealt with by adults and on a school administration level. There really is no one-size-fits-all answer to bullying, but neither is bullying an unsolvable problem, and this novel balances both truths well.