Renee

This is an excellent version of what it is and I enjoyed it a lot! Extremely interesting and I think required reading for fans of the Little House books. I loved them as a kid but they desperately need the context this book provides. I do wish the parts about Laura's youth had been expanded and the parts about her later years condensed somewhat.

This book is bananas. It's grotesque and haunting, and I don't know that I would recommend it widely... but it's also brilliant. I think I'd comp this as Dream Girls meets Get Out, but through a white lens and sicker. Yikes. BUT the examination/critique of whiteness here is accurate, brutal, and necessary in my opinion. Some parts are baffling initially. I thought I didn't “get” the story until almost the last chapter and then it clicked, which is pretty impressive pacing. This might be the most perplexed I have ever been by a book and yet it get 4 stars

I'm not going to officially rate this, but my personal rating is 3 stars. That being said, the hard truths Greta communicates here are incredibly important. Her words are concise, powerful, and tragic.

The reason for the 3 star review is that I don't think the presentation of this book adequately communicates its contents. This is a collection of Greta's speeches. Because they were not written to be collectively presented, and because those in power have continued to fail to act on the climate crisis, the speeches are very repetitive and therefore not as interesting after the first couple. However, after reading this I feel compelled to learn more about the climate crisis and how I can act to stop it, which means this book has served its purpose very well. The book receives 3/5 from me, but Greta herself is 10/10 every time.

I keep thinking about this book. It should be so much more famous! (In the USA, that is. I know Michael Ende is much better known in some places and obviously in Germany.) Truly, in my humble opinion, this is a masterpiece of children's literature akin to A Little Princess, The Phantom Tollbooth, or A Wrinkle in Time.