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A review by saidtheraina
Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire by Susan Tan
3.0
Cilla struggles with the anticipation of becoming a big sister, second grade, and the fact that her two sets of grandparents don't really hang out together, even though she spends a lot of time with each set.
There was a lot I liked about this book. Cilla writes in first person (she's going to be a famous author, after all), talks about the life experiences of being a young person with grandparents from different cultures, and I appreciated the #ownvoices perspective Tan brings to this realistic elementary school tale.
Unfortunately, this didn't end up making the cut for my elementary outreach lineup this year.
The sticking point for me ended up being her age.
Like I mentioned above, this book focuses on the fact that Cilla is in second grade. The book itself is almost 250 pages long - with pretty minimal illustrations. As a general rule, kids like to read about kids who are slightly older them. A year or two, ideally. But this book is way beyond the reading level of a Kindergarten or 1st grader. And I'm not convinced that a majority of 3-5th graders (who seem to be the target audience for this book, based on its girth) want to read about a 2nd grade life. Those kids are there, sure - both the younger kids who can handle it, and the older people who will pick it up - but when I'm picking my lineup, I'm going for the common denominator, mass appeal books.
I'm glad it exists, but it wasn't right for my purposes.
There's also the slight issue of the repeated use of the word "Caucasian." I've been trying to scrub that word from my own vocabulary for years, for reasons listed in lots of places, like this article. The word is only used a time or two in the text itself, but it's used in large font on the flap, and in the publisher's summary.
This book has a bunch of sequels, so clearly it's found an audience - and I'd love to read more by this author myself. I'll happily handsell it to kids too.
There was a lot I liked about this book. Cilla writes in first person (she's going to be a famous author, after all), talks about the life experiences of being a young person with grandparents from different cultures, and I appreciated the #ownvoices perspective Tan brings to this realistic elementary school tale.
Unfortunately, this didn't end up making the cut for my elementary outreach lineup this year.
The sticking point for me ended up being her age.
Like I mentioned above, this book focuses on the fact that Cilla is in second grade. The book itself is almost 250 pages long - with pretty minimal illustrations. As a general rule, kids like to read about kids who are slightly older them. A year or two, ideally. But this book is way beyond the reading level of a Kindergarten or 1st grader. And I'm not convinced that a majority of 3-5th graders (who seem to be the target audience for this book, based on its girth) want to read about a 2nd grade life. Those kids are there, sure - both the younger kids who can handle it, and the older people who will pick it up - but when I'm picking my lineup, I'm going for the common denominator, mass appeal books.
I'm glad it exists, but it wasn't right for my purposes.
There's also the slight issue of the repeated use of the word "Caucasian." I've been trying to scrub that word from my own vocabulary for years, for reasons listed in lots of places, like this article. The word is only used a time or two in the text itself, but it's used in large font on the flap, and in the publisher's summary.
This book has a bunch of sequels, so clearly it's found an audience - and I'd love to read more by this author myself. I'll happily handsell it to kids too.