Mya’s Strategy to Save the World

Volume XXV / Issue 26 - March 15 / 2019
Mya's Strategy to Save the World
Mya's Strategy to Save the World
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Mya’s Strategy to Save the World

Author: 
Tanya Lloyd Kyi
Toronto, ON: Puffin Canada, April, 2019
191 pp., hardcover & ebook, $18.99 (hc.)
ISBN: 
9780735265257 (hc.)
9780735265271 (ebook)
Grades: 
Grades 3-7
Ages: 
Ages 8-12
Review by: 
Beth Wilcox Chng (Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy)
5
Excerpt: 

Every Monday at lunch, we had a “Kids for Social Justice” meeting. Cleo and I started the club in sixth grade, after Mom told me about the government in Myanmar imprisoning a newspaper editor named U Win Tin. She told me his story on EXACTLY the same day Cleo finished I am Malala. (See what I mean about Cleo and me being from the same planet? We are seriously synchronized.)

Mya Parsons, 12, is facing middle school problems. While her mom is away in Myanmar taking care of Mya’s grandmother, Mya has to deal with her social difficulties that she believes primarily stem from her lack of a cell phone. Mya’s unique personality comes a lot from her passion for social justice. Along with her best friend Cleo, Mya runs her Kids for Social Justice club at school. Mya sees this as a stepping stone for her future dream career in the United Nations.

Mya has an entertaining voice as the narrator, and this novel manages to weave together emails and first-person narration to create a unique story. There are also several Myanmar-style recipes included as part of Mya’s cooking lessons from her maternal aunt. Mya’s passion for social justice means that she informs the reader about certain important global issues, including the Rohingya crisis and problems in the cobalt mining industry.

Mya’s Strategy to Save the World has a lot of personality and will be enjoyed by middle-school readers.

Highly Recommended
Reviewer: 

Beth Wilcox Chng, a teacher-librarian in Prince George, British Columbia, is a graduate of the Master of Arts in Children’s Literature program at the University of British Columbia.