I've heard there are TWO sides to every story - maybe even THREE

kiya@evpl — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:07:00 GMT

Millicent Min is having a bad summer -

1. Her mom signed her up for volleyball
2. Her grandmother is about to move away
3. She doesn't really have friends, though Emily is a possibility
4. She has to tutor awful Stanford Wong
5. Her mother might be really sick

Or maybe Stanford Wong is having a bad summer -

He flunked English and has to go to summer school
His dad canceled Basketball Camp (see #1)
His parents are fighting, and his dad works too much
He has to be tutored by that geek genius, Millicent Min
His grandmother has to move to a retirement home
He likes Emily, but she's always hanging around Millicent

Emily's summer starts out bad, but it might be improving -

- 1. Her parents split, and she and her mom are moving across the country
- 2. She misses her dad a lot
- 3. Her dad sends her a credit card - for emergencies only...
- 4. Her mom signs her up for volleyball , but she meets Millicent there
- 5. Millicent knows this cute guy Stanford , but something doesn't ring true
- 6. Her dad doesn't think needing ice cream after volleyball is an emergency

Lisa Yee wrote Millicent Min, Girl Genius in 2003. It won lots of awards. She wanted to write a book about a girl who was lonely, so she chose a character who was very smart, and in school with much older kids.

Three years later, Yee's 10 year old daughter said she hated boys. Yee decided to write a book from a boy's point of view, and show that they were okay, just sometimes different from girls. She decided to tell the story of that same summer that was in Millicent's book, only from Stanford's point of view, in Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time.

Her readers loved it, and asked for a book that showed how Emily saw that summer, too. Yee followed up with So Totally Emily Ebers, which came out this spring.

It's fun to see the same events from different points of view. Do you know other books like this?

Links:

Search results matching tags 'humor' and 'point of view'

I've heard there are TWO sides to every story - maybe even THREE