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A review by dlberglund
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina
4.0
This book has a lot going for it. It was hard for me to evaluate analytically, however, because I kept personalizing the bullying struggle...how am I, as an educator, supposed to stop these insane types of escalating bullying? This is a frightening kind, and one I've seen in smaller doses- the person without a logical reason that is in the bullied person's control. (Not that there are many kinds of bullying that make sense.) Each time she upped her bullying game, I looked harder around me and wondered if I could be as clueless as the educators in the book. How do we make school safe for each kid? How do I protect the Piddies and fill up the Yaquis in ways that prevent them from turning against others?
I thought the portrayal of Yaqui was somewhat simplistic (wrong side of the tracks, dysfunctional and possibly completely absent family) but I was glad there wasn't a gushy 'let's all make up' moment. In reality, we don't get to see and heal the emotional baggage of our bullies, and I didn't want this book to turn into an after school special.
I thought the portrayal of Yaqui was somewhat simplistic (wrong side of the tracks, dysfunctional and possibly completely absent family) but I was glad there wasn't a gushy 'let's all make up' moment. In reality, we don't get to see and heal the emotional baggage of our bullies, and I didn't want this book to turn into an after school special.