Dubbed \u201cquirky\u201d by her mother (an assessment readers will likely agree with), Millie narrates her own well-paced story in a flow of verbiage she often has trouble stemming. She is \u201cthe boss\u201d but defers to her mom, who happens to be the mayor of Washington, D.C. Mayor Maude\u2019s a single parent (Millie\u2019s father is dead), but her assistant, Josephine Draper, adds more rules, like insisting that Millie\u2019s pet chick, Extra Spicy, live in the coop outside. Millie and her \u201cbestest friends,\u201d Lunchbox, Poppy Anne, and Atticus, also face a sneaky, name-calling bully, Buckley. (Mazique drops an early clue: Only recently has Buckley \u201cbecome so mean.\u201d) Other conflicts involve Millie learning she can\u2019t take Extra Spicy to the school\u2019s Family Field Day and competing against Buckley in the three-legged race. It strains credulity somewhat that both teacher and principal fail to get Millie\u2019s side of the bullying story, but Mazique gives Millie a relatable awareness of her struggles with impulse control, like \u201cnot being quiet and not sitting in my seat.\u201d Eventually things improve in a teachable turnaround that\u2019s a bit abrupt but still moving. Glenn\u2019s realistic cartoon-style drawings portray Mille, her family, the principal, and Atticus as Black; the teacher, Poppy Anne, and Buckley as white; and Lunchbox as East Asian.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dubbed \u201cquirky\u201d by her mother (an assessment readers will likely agree with), Millie narrates her own well-paced story in a flow of verbiage she often has trouble stemming. She is \u201cthe boss\u201d but defers to her mom, who happens to be the mayor of Washington, D.C. Mayor Maude\u2019s a single parent (Millie\u2019s father is dead), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}