Millicent Min, Girl Genius

Millicent Min is having a bad summer. Her fellow high school students hate her for setting the curve. Her fellow 11-year-olds hate her for going to high school. And her mother has arranged for her to tutor Stanford Wong, the poster boy for Chinese geekdom. But then Millie meets Emily. Emily doesn't know Millicent's IQ score. She actually thinks Millie is cool. And if Millie can hide her awards, ignore her grandmother's advice, swear her parents to silence, blackmail Stanford, and keep all her lies straight, she just might make her first friend. What's it going to take? Sheer genius.

Millicent Min is finishing high school and taking her first college course. She can recite the names of all the American presidents alphabetically and by time in office. She’s a Math Club champion, and can beat everyone in her school in chess. She is also eleven years old and friendless.

Despite the somewhat dour synopsis I just gave, Millicent Min is one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. Millicent is so smart and analytical, yet so clueless socially, that you can’t help but laugh as you watch her try to navigate the world of friendship. And you can’t help but feel sorry for her when you realize just how much her high IQ has alienated her from her peers.

The characters in this book are sparkling and interesting. show more Millicent, as the narrator, is a hoot, whether or not she realizes it. What I also liked were the characterizations of her parents and grandmother. Lisa Yee’s adults aren’t absent and blank; they are as dynamic as the children characters, and you see them go through similar problems. I really liked that inclusion of an adult world, especially for Millicent who acts so adult already. I also liked that Millicent was Chinese (like me), but that it wasn’t a dominating theme. This isn’t a book about a Chinese girl; this is a book about smart girl who can’t seem to fit in.

Even though it’s meant for children, it’s clever, sensitive, and humorous enough that adults will enjoy it too. show less

Booktalk: Millicent Min is an excellent student. She's on the honor roll and she won first place in a statewide math competition. She's just passed the 11th grade with flying colors and looks forward to starting college soon. Oh, by the way, Millicent is 11 years old.

She's what you call an academic prodigy. Which means she's a genius. Millicent loves learning and reading and solving complicated problems, like helping the next-door neighbors with their taxes. Just hear how thrilled she is about the first college class she's taking this summer: (play read pp. 16-17, "At 9:28" to end of chapter).

But as smart as Millicent is, she's pretty clueless. She doesn't have friends her age and she really doesn't know how to make any. Actually who show more wants to be friends with some little kid who sets the grading curve for the entire junior class? So life can be pretty lonely for Millicent.

Then Millicent meets Emily who's just moved to town from New Jersey. Unlike the other kids Emily doesn't know Millicent is a genius. Even better, Emily likes Millicent and they hang out together over the summer. Millicent is sure this friendship will last only as long as Emily doesn't find out she's a genius. So she hides away all her academic trophies and certificates and award ribbons, and she works hard to make it seem like she's just a regular kid. A clever plan to be sure--but is she genius enough to hide the truth forever? show less

I just didn't enjoy this book. I understand that the whole point of the book is that Millicent is book smart but clueless when it comes to social interactions, but does she have to be so unlikeable? Honestly, I found most of the characters in the book to be either vapid or snobby and maybe it's just too much of a flashback to middle school, but the whole experience was a slog. Hopefully the intended audience gets more out of it than I did, but it just didn't work for me.

Millicent Min is a genius. She's only 11, but about to enter her senior year of high school. For fun this summer she's taking a college level poetry class. And things are fine, really. Her parents are forcing her to take a volleyball class, which is a little annoying. Oh, and she's tutoring Stanford Wong, this jerky kid she can't stand. And pretty much her only friend is her grandma Maddie... but really, things are fine.

Enter Emily Ebers. Millie meets Emily at volleyball and they click instantly. Finally Millicent has a friend her own age! The only problem is that Millicent hasn't told Emily that she's a genius. She's afraid that if she tells Emily that everything will change between them, so she keeps putting it off. But Millie can't show more put it off forever.... can she?

I really enjoyed this book a lot! I found Millicent's narrative voice to be hilarious because of how seriously she takes herself. I also really liked that it has an Asian American main character, but race is not really much of an issue. The book was fun and funny and touching at the same time, seeing Millicent really begin to grow and realize that there is more to people than brains. show less

Millicent Min is a genius, literally. WIth her high IQ she's skipped so many grades that she's now a senior in high school at age 11. In fact this summer she's taking one college course. And it doesn't bother too much, being so different, because she knows she's more mature than the average kids. But she's never had a friend her own age, so when she meets Emily Ebers at the volleyball team practices her mom forced her to join, she decides to hide her intelligence and be "normal." But she can't really do it that successfully; she comes across as just very weird sometimes. And she is SO funny. She has to tutor her arch enemy Stanford Wong, too, and deal with her grandmother's sudden decision to move to England--her grandmother has always show more been her best friend; how will she get along without her? Told in diary format, this charming book will win you over, and you'll be rooting for Millie to figure things out. First of a great trilogy, where all 3 books take place over the same summer, but each is from a different character's point of view. See Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time and So Totally Emily Ebers. A great concept that is really fun to read. You can read them in any order, and if you're like me you'll find yourself flipping back between books to see how she wrote the same story in three different ways, and kept it fresh and funny each time. I can't wait to meet her this Friday at a library conference! (reviewed in 2007) show less

I dunno. I wanted to like this more than I did. And there's nothing really wrong with it. It's a tiny bit cliched & predictable, and Millie comes across, esp. at the beginning, more as if she has Asperger's than just plain too much smarts. Otoh, what about when Millie was practicing [her] spontaneous laugh" - ? I bet lots of people have done that.

And I think that her parents pushed her too hard to become 'more well-rounded' and to make friends, even though that worked out in the end.

I guess maybe I identified with Millie too much. I don't believe that it's automatically unhealthy not to want to play team sports or to make friends. And all the examples of things that Yee uses to illustrate Millie's eccentricities seem normal to me. For show more example, it's perfectly ok, imo, to "add up our Taco Bell receipt to make sure we hadn't been overcharged."

True, Millie is only 11 and so she needs to be shown the world beyond her books - but who made those books available in the first place? I just didn't find her parents to be convincingly developed. And I didn't find her change of attitude/ personality from bookworm to social butterfly to be convincing, either.

Um, I think I have more to say, but I can't think of it right now..." show less