Millie Fierce

June 25, 2012
Strong-minded picture-book heroines abound, but not many books ask what’s behind the bluster—or represent it with such deliciousness. Quiet, mild-mannered Millie, who never misbehaves, is forced to think again after three girls from school stroll right over her sidewalk chalk drawing. “That’s me,” she says, pondering the smudge they’ve left behind. Then a new thought dawns: “I’m not a smudge,” she announces. Watching Millie become Millie Fierce provides most of the story’s laughs; with a fiendish look in her eyes, she files “each of her nails to a tiny point,” paints the dog’s face blue, and dances on the furniture. Manning’s (Ten Little Goblins) watercolors bubble over with sybaritic delight; in one, Millie lies languidly on a school desk, dumping jelly beans all over the floor. Eventually, Millie is forced to work out the difference between strength of character and fierceness that hurts people, and she reforms (almost). An unexpected Yeatsian lilt to Manning’s writing (“Millie frizzed out her hair and made the crazy eye”) lifts the text out of the ordinary; her powers of observation set it apart, too. Ages 3–7.

July 15, 2012
Alluring, edgy watercolors with sharp angles show a tyke's transformation from mild to monstrous and back again. "Millie was too short to be tall, too quiet to be loud, and too plain to be fancy." Pink-cheeked and limp-haired, Millie feels like nothing special. She's ignored and harassed. Schoolmates tromp on her chalk sidewalk picture, walking "all over her flower, and over it, and over it, until it [i]s nothing more than a big, multicolored smudge." Such bullying is beyond tolerance, and Millie Fierce emerges. From downcast and slouchy, "feeling like a smudge" herself, Millie becomes upright, hands on hips, eyebrows aggressively slanted. She "frizze[s] out her hair and ma[kes] the crazy eye." She demands that grandpa "Look at me and my ferocity!" But Millie's assertiveness ratchets too high. She flicks food, paints the dog blue, howls at a nonplussed moon and becomes a bully herself. Coming unsurprisingly full circle, Millie concludes that "she likes being good better than being fierce." Manning's intense colors feature fine and pointy details, and her paintings warrant more than a quick glance. It's too bad that Millie's symbolically fierce hairdo is a common style for curly-haired kids. The spiky, colorful art is more interesting than the plot, but Millie's fierceness in the middle will speak both to tots who've tried it and those who haven't. (Picture book. 4-7)

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August 1, 2012

K-Gr 2-Millie is an ordinary girl who often feels ignored; she is "too short to be tall, too quiet to be loud, and too plain to be fancy." Tired of the indifference of others, she decides to stop being subdued and polite and start being fierce. Her change in attitude gets plenty of attention, though not the type that she hopes for. Millie crushes her neighbor's flowers, creates messes in the kitchen, and even eats the birthday boy's cake. When her bad behavior causes her to lose friends and be shunned again, Millie learns that doing good deeds can be a better way to get others to notice her. Manning's vivid watercolor illustrations are engaging and will have readers rooting for Millie, even when her antics turn mean-spirited. Millie Fierce is a delightfully naughty mix between Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are and Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry (Blue Sky Press, 1999).-Stephanie Rivera, Naperville Public Library, IL

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.