Corinne (Girl of the Year)

🎿 AMERICAN GIRL: Corinne Tan lives in present day Aspen Colorado. She's an American girl with Chinese ancestry who loves to ski. A child of divorce, Corinne now has to settle in to a blended family and is ashamed of her new step dad's wealth.🎿 AUDIENCE: This book is written for 8-12 YOs (3rd-7th graders)🎿 STORY: This is not the best American Girls story. It's OK. It feels scattered and too heavy. While it could be more fluid, the writing is engaging and entertaining overall. If your child likes Corinne, they'll enjoy this book.🎿 COULD BE BETTER: 🤔 There were too many issues to be dealt with. Multiple story arc and plotlines lead to a scattered story. It would've been far better to concentrate on one - or even 2 things. 🤔 Corinne's step dad is sweet but doesn't listen and doesn't try to understand or do enough to protect his new family from the racism they face in his community. 🤔 Most children of divorce have to deal with newfound poverty rather than newfound wealth. BUT American girl dolls are high-end so maybe it is true for the American girl customers.🎿 GIFTABLE: For an American Girls' fan, absolutely. I would pair this with a doll and book 2 and put them together in a cool gift bag.💖 If this review was helpful please let me know by clicking on the "Helpful" button 💖

This is, like most books meant for teens and tweens these days, both a lesson and a good read.Corrine's mom is getting re-married and they will be moving into stepdad's home. Corrine is Asian and Arne, her new stepdad is from Sweden. Arne's home is bigger and offers a lot of perks; the girls, Corinne and her sister Gwynn will each have their own bedrooms and their bedrooms are larger than the one that they shared at mom's home.A lot of the book is based around skiing and skating and winter sports which the girls love. And like most teen girls, Cori as she's known has a best friend in Cassidy, a BFF whom she confides in and trusts, mostly.Things at home start to feel weird for Cori and she takes some pretty drastic and scary steps to try and resolve them. Of course, the resolution comes after talking about them and letting other people in on what she is feeling.As expected, ***Spoiler Alert *** ...everything works out great, everyone is loving and happy, and life lessons are learned.This is a good book, enjoyable, but it will take you up and down as you empathize with Cori's misunderstood (by herself and others') feelings.Recommended.Review of: Corinne (Girl of the Year)

Corinne and her little sister, Gwynn, are getting ready for some big changes, including moving, and a new stepdad. Their mother is remarrying, and they'll be moving to Arne's home. One of the biggest warnings for Corinne is when Arne shows hesitation in letting the girls paint a wall purple. She wonders if he'll begin to control their lives.That's just one of the big issues facing Corinne. The book is taking place "today," so a certain virus is mentioned, as well as bias related to Corinne's heritage, and historical bias. Her new stepdad seems to brush off anything brought up about the issue. Corinne also begins to lie, over and over, to her friend, trying to hide her new life.With a lot going on, it can get a bit heavy at times. The topic that keeps it from getting too heavy is Corinne's new dog, Flurry, who she wants to train as a rescue dog. Her mom is also trying to start a restaurant, so there's some interesting talk and excitement over that, too.Overall, I enjoyed the book, although I felt like it needed more moments of joy to help balance out the amount of stress Corinne was under, with all of the changes going on in her life. I found the ending situation a little bit unrealistic, but then, it is a work of fiction. My favorite part about the book was probably the connection between Corinne and her little sister, Gwynn. It was neat to see how American Girl has connected two of their lines, and it would be nice to see this expanded with future Girls of Today books, and historical ones, as well. The love the two girls have for one other is certainly something we could hope all siblings will want to emulate.

strong themes of family, friendship and forgiveness.I was pleasantly surprised after reading “Corinne”. The last few American Girls books I’ve read were full of woke agenda and I didn’t forward them to my intended recipients. This will be happily received by my niece.No need to recap the story as the publisher blurb and other reviews have taken care of that. What I will say is that the multi-racial family and focus on Asian food, a bit of history and racism is very timely and handled respectfully. Also timely are the winter sports of skating, skiing and search & rescue which coincide quite nicely with the Olympics.Corinne acts quite mature for a 10 year old, IMO. There’s a lot of upheaval in her family and she’s an introspective kid but her self speak and freedom to move about town are actions I’d assign to 14-15 year olds. That issue aside, the relationship between her and sister Gwen is lovely and one that’s a great example. I’d say the same about her relationships with the adults in the story. She’s a respectful kid and even in the midst of all the change, she took care for others rather than being self centered.With many fun threads to explore, (search & rescue dogs, skiing, skating, new restaurant), this could be an exciting new series for a good long time. The mountains of Aspen are a great location and so far, Corinne and her family are great characters.All things considered, a good selection for 10-13 year olds with many opportunities for discussion of important events📚