Millicent Min: Girl Genius - Lisa Yee

Yee, Lisa. 2003. Millicent Min: Girl Genius. New York: Scholastic, Inc.

Grades 4 - 8

When a child has been identified as being a genius, it doesn’t mean that that particular child is smart in the world of personal relationships. Yee understands this and has captured this painful world through the first person narrative of a child who thinks and intellectualizes like an adult. The child is Min, a young girl who truly does not understand the ways of peer relationships nor recognizes the loneliness she has in her life. Min is the center of this novel, an authentic young voice that allows readers to see how life is for these special children. Through the author’s masterly use of foreshadowing, the reader understands the problems and misunderstandings that arise for Min, understands how she is being manipulated and made fun of through Yee’s accurate creation of events and conversations. The reader is given a true depiction of the many sides to the difficulties that many gifted children face, which most people are often unaware of, yet the author weaves these difficulties into the daily life of Min and her quest for friendship in a natural fashion that is not preachy nor condescending. Not surprisingly, the reader is quickly pulled into this very personal story of Min’s social education and ends up rooting for her to find the ability to be a true friend, to say she was sorry, and to just enjoy the fun that life can be without the constant analysis of each and every event and action. It is through the course of this eye-opening novel, the reader follows the difficult journey this young girl makes from being a girl genius and the isolation that accompanies it, to being a girl genius who understands what it means to be a friend.