Mya's Strategy to Save the World

Written by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Puffin Canada

978-0-73526-525-7

200 pp.

Ages 9-12

April 2019
Reviewed from Advance Reader's Copy

She may be dealing with her mother's prolonged absence tending to her ill grandmother, a comic but persistent misunderstanding about her sister's shin pads, a communication project with an annoying boy, and a mission to convince her parents to get her a cell phone, but Mya is still out to save the world because it seems to need it.

Twelve-year-old Mya, eight-year-old sister Nanda and their father seem to be a little lost when Mom heads to Myanmar to tend to her ailing mother. Mya, who aspires to work for the United Nations, uses all her skills in conflict resolution, patience, forgiveness and more to handle the ever-imploding household that can't balance meal preparation, laundry, cleaning and child care. But Mya is also a globally conscious and compassionate girl who, having organized their Kids for Social Justice group with best friend Cleo, worries about many issues, including the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. However, while she would love to have the support of Cleo, her friend has just been gifted her first cell phone and is way too involved with texting and her crush Drew.

Meanwhile, Mya has been partnered with Ian to work on a communications project for English. As they pursue their project, sometimes in sync and sometimes not, Mya begins to learn a little bit more about effectively interacting with others to get her points across although not without a few misunderstandings and occasional strife. Oh, and did I mention the issues surrounding the mining of cobalt–war, child labour, safety, etc.–which is a key component in electronics like cell phones? Can Mya use all her diplomacy to find a friendly resolution to all the issues–environmental, social justice, family and relationship–with which she is concerned?

Wow, this girl has a lot on her plate: family, friends, school, boys, the world. (Did I mention she gets her period while her mother is away?) Yet, she never curls up and hides her head under the blankets. She's other there doing her bit and trying her best. Even when it seems like no one appreciates her efforts or takes them seriously, she manages. Taking advice from her father,

...if people take small steps in the right direction, the world will slowly shift. (pg. 158)

Mya continues to crusade for herself, others and our world. But Tanya Lloyd Kyi never makes Mya a saint or a tedious rah-rah cheerleader.  Rather, Mya is a stalwart advocate for doing one's best. Moreover, there is a freshness to Mya's social activism and her coming of age story. Tanya Lloyd Kyi could have weighed down the story with social issues that are heart-breaking and alarming or she could have steeped Mya's navigation into puberty with angst and confusion. Instead, she chose to offer hope that those small steps would lead somewhere positive, making those baby steps the first steps to social change and, on  a personal basis, to being a teenager.

••••••••••••••

 
Tanya Lloyd Kyi launches Mya's Strategy to Save the World this week in Vancouver. See details here.

Wings of Olympus & Mya's Strategy to Save the World: Double book launch (Vancouver, BC)

While I'm getting ready to post reviews 

of both these wonderful novels, 

get this Vancouver book event on your calendars

for a double-dose of middle-grade youngCanLit goodness!

••••••••••••••••

Join authors

Kallie George

and

Tanya Lloyd Kyi

for the launches of

Wings of Olympus

 Written by Kallie George

Illustrated by Fiona Hsieh

HarperCollins Canada

978-0-06274-152-3

224 pp.

Ages 8-12

March 2019

and

Mya's Strategy to Save the World

Written by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Puffin Canada

978-0-73526-525-7

200 pp.

Ages 9-12

April 2019

 on

Thursday, April 25, 2019

at

7 p.m.

at

Kidsbooks

2557 W Broadway 

Vancouver, BC

••••••••••••••••

 

 Look for my reviews today and tomorrow 

for a glimpse at the rich stories of 

Wings of Olympus and Mya's Strategy to Save the World

Prince of Pot

Written by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-944-7

216  pp.

Ages 13+

September 2017

I live in the middle of a forest.  On a grow-op. With bears.  And I get shot at on my way home. (pg. 61)

This is definitely living on the edge.  Isaac Mawson's family has been keeping a marijuana grow-op for forty years, starting with Isaac's grandfather Walt who is now debilitated by a stroke.  Their rustic lifestyle includes a cabin with few amenities and a quintet of bears as companions and homeschooling until Isaac and his older sister Judith reached Grade 8. But, though he's in town regularly for school–he's in his final year–and for the grow's supplies, and to see his sister who'd been desperate to leave, Isaac has always found solace in the woods, as well as his artwork.

Once we're in the trees, my lungs expand.  I suppose most people relax when they open their front door and smell dinner cooking.  For me, it's as I step into these hemlocks. (pg. 51)

Then, on one of his routine scouting expeditions, he meets Sam Ko, a new student at his high school and Isaac is smitten.  Sam is a big personality with lots of grit and guts and a flair for drama, on stage and in life.  Too soon he's crushing on the sixteen-year-old and she's bringing him more attention than he wants, bragging about his interactions with a bear (it was the lovely tame Hazel, a bear his father had rescued) and dragging him to her home and parties and sharing his special places with her friends.  And then he learns her dad is a RCMP corporal.  Isaac is torn between having Sam in his life and keeping his family and their lifestyle safe from attention, especially of the law enforcement variety.

Tanya Lloyd Kyi may be better known for her numerous books of middle-grade non-fiction (e.g., Canadian Girls Who Rocked the World, Whitecap Books, 2011; 50 Underwear Questions, Annick Press, 2011; Eyes and Spies, Annick, 2017) but her collection of teen fiction is growing.  Prince of Pot is her fourth YA book and Tanya Lloyd Kyi capably tackles typical teen issues like first loves, grief, and independence with less common ones of pot grow-ops, teen pregnancy, and dyslexia, grabbing her readers with the familiar and the unusual.  Tanya Lloyd Kyi astutely recognizes that for some the atypical is the familiar, and by writing about these unusual circumstances, she's actually letting many teens see themselves in her writing.  Isaac's situation of living in the woods and helping with his family's grow may seem foreign to many of us but, you can bet, somewhere there is a young person who knows that life, those fears and restrictions of living outside of the law. But there's another who knows the dangers of habituating wild animals such as bears, and another who is infatuated with another and doesn't know how to reconcile the conflict of being with that person and the life they want to or need to live.  This is what works in Prince of Pot.  Tanya Lloyd Kyi makes readers completely sympathetic to Isaac's life with his family and the grow and even his actions which can be criminal or gut-wrenching or wholly innocent.  While my heart broke at a turn of events that should never, ever happen in real life, I could see how the story was leading to that moment.  I know Prince of Pot is just fiction but I suspect somewhere someone is living this kind of life.  I can only hope that, while we enjoy the book as an entertaining read, this story might provide guidance to living well, both within the family and independently, as well as within the law and outside of it, if that so happens.