Life's busy, read it when you're ready!

Create a free account to save articles for later, keep track of past articles you’ve read, and receive exclusive access to all RP resources.

Browse thousands of RP articles

Articles, news, and reviews with a Biblical perspective to inform, equip, and encourage Christians.

Get Articles Delivered!

Articles, news,and reviews with a Biblical perspective to inform, equip, and encourage Christians delivered direct to your inbox!

A A
By:

Allergic

It’s Maggie’s 10th birthday and she’s finally going to get the puppy she’s always wanted! Of course, she’s ready the moment she’s dressed to head out to the animal shelter, but it takes a bit of prodding to get mom and dad out the door. Mom is pregnant and has to get her exercises in, and both her parents are more than a little distracted prepping for the baby’s arrival. Maggie wants a puppy in part because she figures her parents are going to be focused on the baby and not her. Her younger twin brothers have each other, and Maggie figures if she has a puppy then she’ll have her own best friend and someone who’ll always pay attention to her. Those are big expectations for a little pup!

The first plot twist is that, after finding just the puppy she wants, Maggie discovers she’s allergic. And not just to this pup but everything with fur or feathers!

Maggie is devastated. And feeling extra lonely.

But she isn’t defeated. Not all pets have fur and feathers, so Maggie makes a list and starts investigating options like turtles, hedgehogs, lizards, and even a tarantula. None of them are a good fit.

Just when Maggie is feeling her lowest, a new girl and her dad move in right next door. Claire is just a grade older than Maggie and looking for a best friend – it’s a wonderful match!

Second plot twist: Claire gets a dog not realizing that means Maggie can’t come to her house anymore.

It’s quite the rollercoaster ride for Maggie, with another big up and down to follow soon after, but thankfully it does end on a high happy note.

Cautions

There are a few cautions, mostly minor, with maybe the most notable simply that at one point Maggie sneaks a mouse and cage into her room without her parents knowing. Going behind your parents’ backs isn’t behavior we wanted modelled for our kids, but I’ll add that Maggie gets her comeuppance. She thinks she knows better than her parents about what’s good for her, but as the itching gets worse and worse, she discovers her parents really do know best.

Language concerns amount to five instances of “OMIGOSH.”

Other considerations: the mom does yoga, but that pops up once, for a of couple pages, and then is over – the spiritual element isn’t really hit on – and it’s mentioned that the next-door neighbor’s parents are divorced, but we’re never told why.

Another caution concerns the impact Maggie’s disappointment might have on sympathetic young pet lovers. I’m sure this will get some sensitive souls crying on Maggie’s behalf.

Conclusion

There are a number of pluses for this book, including the general education it offers on allergies. Maggie meets a boy at school who has his own food allergies, and we follow along as she gets her desensitization shots. As more and more kids these days seem to be getting various allergies, this is a book to show them that they are not alone in their struggles. And it can also clue classmates in on how hard those struggles might be.

The reason I might buy this for my own kids (even though it is available at the library) is because a lot of kids’ fiction today is about angst – about how no one else in the world understands them. That’s something to watch out for because it reinforces an idea that’s common enough, but isolating. What kid is going to turn to their mom or dad if they think their parents just don’t get it? What I really liked about Allergic is that the parents, even when they are distracted and busy, aren’t just written off as irrelevant. Maggie thinks no one is paying attention to her and that she’s all on her own, but she learns that she’s actually got it wrong. I’d say that’s the moral to this story, but I’ll also add that this point might evade many a young reader. But this is such an engaging story that I think you can count on your kids eventually getting it, because they’re going to read this one again and again.

Enjoyed this article?

Get the best of RP delivered to your inbox every Saturday for free.


Up Next


Book Reviews, Graphic novels

Manga Classics: Anne of Green Gables

by L.M. Montgomery adapted by Crystal S. Chan 308 pages / 2020 Anne is an orphan girl living in the Prince Edward Island of the 1870s, sent by mistake to the home of an aged brother and sister who need help with the farm work. The mistake is, they asked for a boy. Instead, they got the imaginative, effusive, emotional, red-head Anne. And once they meet, they can't let her go. While Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author, and Anne of Green Gables (first published in 1908) a very Canadian story, it's always been incredibly popular in Japan too. So it makes sense that her story would be given a manga treatment. Thankfully, the adaptation is faithfully done, and at 300 pages, given the space it needs to tell the story well - only a very few scenes are given an abridged treatment. If you're unfamiliar with manga, the style does take some getting used to, in the first place because the Japanese read right to left. That means what would be the back of the book to us, is the front of the book to them. Even though this is in English, it's still formated in that "reverse" style. Another feature that will strike readers as unusual is the way manga will sometimes depart from a semi-realistic style of drawing to something much more cartoonish, and then go back to realistic all in the space of a few frames, or even in the same frame. So, for example, while Anne's strict and controlled adoptive "mother" Marilla is depicted with realistic eyes, the emotional Anne has eyes in all sorts of styles. Most often they are doe-sized, but when she is angry or perturbed, they become big black dots, and sometimes she is drawn with no eyes at all. If that strikes you as very strange, just consider how a Western reader will know that a lightbulb over a character's head means they have an idea. That's a bit of cartoon "emoticon shorthand" to let readers know something without spending a lot of words on it. Manga has its own, different cartoon emoticons, and they do need to be learned. But just like the lightbulb, they aren't hard to figure out. Cautions Cautions here are only the same ones that we'd have for the original source material. At one point Anne is being taught how to pray, and her first prayer, while not exactly disrespectful, certainly isn't what it should be. But the point is, she doesn't know how to talk to God, and still has to be taught, so I don't think this should be much of a concern. Then there's also Anne's stubbornness. When a classmate, Gilbert Blythe, calls her "Carrots," Anne breaks her chalk slate over his head. You'd think that would make them even (or put Anne in need of apologizing to him) but Anne resolves to never speak to Gilbert again. And she keeps to that pledge for years! The book shows this to be ridiculous, and I only mention it here because this comic format makes Anne accessible to a younger audience that may need a little parental guidance to recognize just how bad Anne's stubbornness really is. Finally, in an afterword to the story, the adapter Crystal Chan notes that she is a feminist who "loves the elements of feminism in Anne of Green Gables." "Feminist" is sometimes synonymous with supporting "a woman's right to choose" so that might have parents concerned about whether this ideology is hidden within. But there is no need for worry: whatever sort of feminist the adapter might be, she has stuck closely to the original 100-year-old material (unlike the recent Netflix adaptation). Conclusion This is a fantastic, faithful, adaptation of a great book. Teens should skip straight to the original, but for younger readers, or the reluctant sort, this will be a great way to introduce them to this dynamic lass. If you do intend to get a copy, be sure you get the "Manga Classic" version, as there is another comic, that one by C.W. Cooke and Tidalwave Productions, that only tells part of the story, ending abruptly and with no conclusion coming. I've included its cover image to the right here, to make it easier to identify what not to get. Don't accidentally get that one while you're searching for this manga adaptation....


We Think You May Like