Roller Girl

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As a mildly conservative parent I had quite a few issues with this book. It started on page 54 when there are panels depicting "piercings", "dyed hair", and "makeup". While I think those are a little mature for 12 year old girls, it was the fourth panel that bothered me: "other assets" with a graphic of a low-cut blouse and cleavage. It was absolutely unnecessary. To the mom's credit on page 144, Astrid is forbidden to say "the H word" (hate). I had that rule for my kids when they were younger too. But, I soon saw that while mom might have been on top of a particular word, there were so many other worse problems with Astrid's behavior the summer between fifth and sixth grades.

On pages 116 - 120 Astrid dyes her hair without mom's permission. Then she tricks her mom with a fake piercing so that mom is relieved the piercing is fake and not too upset about the hair dye. The only condition was that she has to dye it back for school.

On pages 174 - 183, after discovering that Astrid has been lying about the carpool, her mom was upset and sent Astrid to her room. Astrid throws a little fit in her room and then her mom comes in and Astrid unloads all her feelings. Mom was sympathetic and takes Astrid to apologize and her only punishment is that she has to go to work with mom for the rest of the summer.

On page 219 I was confused because Astrid says, "my first jam..." but she was a blocker since they picked Zoey to be jammer instead of Astrid.

Round 1 Questions

Round 2 Questions