First Readers Book Review: Mighty Meg

I love that this is the second superhero kid book we own featuring a black girl. It’s something I find refreshing. It’s something that goes right over Madeline’s head. She takes it as not unexpected, which is something I’m proud of her for. With racial bias starting as young as three, it’s something I’m doing my best to minimize. But she has had fantastic black female role models in all her school teachers, so I shouldn’t be surprised to see her embracing black girl superheroes.

And embrace them we certainly do. Mighty Meg is so much fun! It’s a small step up in story length and depth from Mia Mayhem in that there’s a bit more story going on with the character relationships. I think Meg is a bit older than Mia so this would make sense. And where Mia was born with her powers, Mighty Meg has to grapple with the fact that she is given the powers through a magic ring and her choice to embrace it or escape it. Obviously she embraces it. But she keeps it a secret and has no school or grown ups to help her learn, so we get to experience her learning what she’s capable of on her own and troubleshooting and testing those powers by herself.

As for the books themselves, something I find very clever is the color! Each book is a different color, with the artwork all in that color. The first is orange, then blue, then yellow and so on! It’s such a cool thing I haven’t seen done before.

The one thing I’m not sure I like is the grouping of all of these books together. On one level, it’s nice because we just pop a bookmark in and don’t have to go find the next book on our shelf, but on the other hand, the covers aren’t as pleasing. There’s something I love about a stack of little chapter books, which I’m lacking here. But Madeline doesn’t mind at all, and kind of enjoys this one because it’s a big ole book to her. So I’m on the fence with this style, but since it was gifted to us, I won’t complain! I’m just happy we have them. We really like these books and enjoy every time we get a chance to read them.