Fourteen-year-old
Doreen Green moved from sunny California to the suburbs of New
Jersey. She must start at a new school, make new friends, and
continue to hide her tail. Yep, Doreen has the powers of . . . a
squirrel! After failing at several attempts to find her new BFF,
Doreen feels lonely and trapped, liked a caged animal. Then one day
Doreen uses her extraordinary powers to stop a group of troublemakers
from causing mischief in the neighborhood, and her whole life
changes. Everyone at school is talking about it! Doreen contemplates
becoming a full-fledged Super Hero. And thus, Squirrel Girl is born!
She saves cats from trees, keeps the sidewalks clean, and dissuades
vandalism. All is well until a real-life Super Villain steps out of
the shadows and declares Squirrel Girl his archenemy. Can Doreen
balance being a teenager and a Super Hero? Or will she go . . . NUTS?
My Rating: *****
The
first thing that needs to be said about this book, is that it's meant
for younger teens/kids. The only other Marvel book I've currently
read is Black Widow: Forever Red, which was more of an older
teen novel. To make another comparison, Black Widow would be like the
MCU and Squirrel Girl would be like the Marvel cartoons. This is
something that I've tried to keep in mind when it comes to my rating
and review.
Overall,
I found The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World to
be an enjoyable read. It's funny, energetic, and lighthearted –
much like it's protagonist. Doreen is a sweet kid. She's very
optimistic and upbeat, and she's the type of person who would be a
great friend to have. She's a big fan of heroes, which is something I
think a lot of us can relate to. She's also pretty naive, which kind
of got old after a while for me, but I'm willing to overlook it.
The
formatting/style of the book is nice. It's primarily told in 3rd
person POV, with occasional chapters being 1st person. It
also will switch between Doreen/Squirrel Girl, her friend Ana Sophia,
the book's villain, and Tippy Toe (Doreen's squirrel friend). Tippy
Toe's chapters are the ones told through 1st person. There
are also occasional chapters that are text messages, and these are
where you can find some appearances from some of the other Marvel
heroes. Also, throughout the book you can find footnotes from where
Doreen is reading the story with you. These footnotes provide some
entertaining insight and additional information about some of the
characters – like the fact that Ana Sophia reads comic books about
made up heroes who are angsty, brooding, grown men who wear tights.
Hmm, that sounds kind of familiar…
While
the book is entertaining and it is meant for a younger audience,
there were some areas I had a few issues with.
For
one thing, the book can be pretty cliché/stereotypical at times. In
the high school, you have the stereotypical popular girls. They're
not nice, and you can only speak to them if they acknowledge you
first. They're called the Somebodies, and even though there's nothing
related between the two, the fact that they're called that made me
think of Kingdom Hearts.
The
villain, the Micro-Manager, is also pretty much a cartoon style bad
guy right down to the fact he actually goes “Mwa ha ha”. His main
goal is to be recruited into Hydra, and he thinks beating Squirrel
Girl is the way to do it. That's about all there is to him, minus a
small bit of backstory that did make me feel a little bad for him.
Even though this is a book for younger audiences, I still think that
the Micro-Manager could have been fleshed out a little bit more. From
how the book ended with him, I suspect that he probably appears again
in the second book, so maybe they'll do more with him then.
Another
part that I didn't 100% like was the treatment of some of the other
Marvel characters. Some of the characters were fine, like Black Widow
and Thor. Rocket (and by extension Groot) provided some of the most
entertaining text messages and was ultimately the most helpful to
Doreen, which was a little surprising. The main issues I had were
with Winter Soldier and Iron Man. I don't even know how to describe
Winter Soldier except as intense. His idea of helping is to tell you
to tell him where to go kill a guy and then for you to go change your
name with something that starts with a 'Y', which just seemed sort of
weird to me. In Iron Man's case, Doreen doesn't think he's a real
hero. She think he's the Avengers errand boy. Her reason for this is
explained, and while it does make me laugh, it's a pretty weak
explanation. Considering how popular all of the heroes are, to the
point where paparazzi follows Thor on occasion, I have a hard time
seeing how Doreen is clueless about Iron Man being a hero.
I
also didn't really care for Tippy Toe's chapters, and I didn't really
see what the point was for a good chunk of them. This is a more minor
problem though, as her chapters were usually on the shorter side and
there wasn't a whole lot of them.
Despite
these few problems, I still like this book and it gave me some good
laughs. There is a sequel to it, and I think I might try to read it
sometime, though it's not going to be a book I'd be in a hurry to
read.
If
you're looking for a fun Marvel read, or you have a younger cousin,
sibling, or child who enjoys Marvel, I would recommend picking this
book up.
