Millie Fierce

Little Millie is not exceptional. She is  “too short to be tall, too quiet to be loud, too plain to be fancy.” People ignore her during show-and-tell, no one notices when she enters a room, and she always gets the smallest slice of birthday cake at a party. She is so unnoticeable that other kids don’t even seem to realize they are ignoring her or desecrating her work. She decides that the way to get people to take notice, and to stop stepping on her, is to become fierce. Not gay or Beyoncé fierce, but angry, aggressively energetic, impossible to overlook.

She files her nails to a point, then runs them along the chalk board, makes a lot of noise, destroys a little property, and takes a huge hunk of cake away from a birthday boy. But she realizes the law of diminishing returns: when people get used to her obnoxiousness, they lose interest. When the boy whose cake she has commandeered is devastated by her actions, she understands that she can’t make herself be who she isn’t. She trudges home in shame, and tries to make amends for her alter-ego, Millie Fierce. It would be a didactic ending but for the delightful last page where she is seen terrorizing her stuffed bunny, with the word “Mostly” appended to Millie’s learning she likes being good.

The illustrations are very entertaining. The lively and vibrant watercolors contrast with the whimsical, mildly grotesque drawings. I’m guessing  pre-readers and early readers will enjoy them as well. They will also like that Millie lets out her inner-demon, while adults will like that the demon is reckoned with.

Millie Fierce at 29 pages is available from Philomel Books. Jane Manning is both the writer and illustrator of the book.