BOTM October 2024: The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl

[Elza]

Welcome to our Book of the Month discussion post! Each month we pick a great Middle Grade read to enjoy as a group.

October 2024’s Book of the Month selection is The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty.
Categories: realistic fiction, situational comedy, coming of age
Content Rating: Target age 9-12. After surviving a lightning strike, Lucy has been a mathematical genius. Homeschooling has allowed Lucy to focus on her education, but before hitting the Ivy League, her grandmother insists on Lucy attending the local middle school. Content includes minor friendship drama, misunderstandings with teachers and disagreements between children and their guardians, and depiction of OCD behavior (largely left as a background detail, not a major issue of the book).



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READ ALONG
• Grab a copy of our Book of the Month selection from your favorite bookseller, library, or reading app. This title is also available via audio, narrated by Ana Isabel.

• Share your thoughts here with the GMGR group! If you wish to discuss a specific plot point, we ask that you place that portion under a Spoiler, instructions can be found by clicking on the link (some html is ok) at the top right of the text box when you are creating a message.


Happy reading!

[Elza]

Stacy McAnulty's books always have a wonderful dose of humor! I hope y'all enjoy this one.

[Manybooks]

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl

(view spoiler)[A lot of my Goodreads friends seem to really have enjoyed if not actually majorly adored Stacy McAnulty's middle grade novel The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl (and the majority of GR reviews are also positive and with very high ratings). However for me personally, sorry, but I ended up stalling and giving up on The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl when I tried reading the book in 2018 (even though I did and do kind of enjoy main protagonist and math genius Lucy Callahan's tone of narrative voice) and that I am not really all that keen on revisiting The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl either (but yes, this might well change in the future, but for now, no thank you).

For indeed, I do generally speaking have some rather major concerns both emotional and philosophical (read intellectual) with how in fictional representations of STEM themes (and in my opinion particularly regarding novels geared towards younger readers) math, engineering and science savvy individuals both young and old are far too often (and stereotypically) equated with geekiness, with mental health challenges, with being socially inept and unable to fit in at school, at home, in society in general (nothing wrong with not being neuro-typical, of course, nothing wrong with books showing mental health concerns and neuro-diverse characters either, but why are science and math geniuses so very often being presented and depicted as nerdy, as socially awkward, as painfully introverted, as always saying things at the wrong time, in the wrong place). And honestly, I (and especially so my inner teenager who was considered quite majorly geeky and hugely nerdy in middle and high school but who also had classmates who were very science and math oriented and at the same time really popular and did not at all fit the portrait of the geeky, socially inept and even potentially a bit mad scientist and mathematician type) would much rather be reading novels where if the main protagonist (or indeed other more secondary characters) are supposed to be someones with major math or science know-hows and talents, that this is textually achieved for said characters without all kinds of mental health and social and emotional immaturity scenarios attached (not only much too stereotypical for me, but also rather denigrating and problematic in and of itself, and yes, even if inadvertently so).

Therefore and with my above musings in mind, with The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl and main protagonist Lucy Callahan, well, the main STEM message that the author, that Stacy McAnulty seems to be presenting (at least to and for me and in my opinion) is that being a math genius must somehow entail being reclusive, being beset with and by a multitude of quirks and challenges (including OCD), being awkwardly socially isolated and really only into one thing, into mathematics and just that. And that Lucy also just has to depicted by McAnulty in The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl as acquiring her amazing mathematical talents and abilities after being struck by lightning and receiving brain damage (and thus being kind of a flawed savant), this all has been such a textual turn off for me (and also rather angers me as well) and really not promoting and making STEM popular but rather the opposite so to speak that I simply do not want (at least at present) to bother finishing with The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl (and that I am for this reason giving The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl a DNF and do wish that Stacy McAnulty could have written her Lucy Callahan character as being a mathematical genius not because there is something damaged about her brain after that lightning strike but simply talented regarding math and with no complications and strange reasons why). (hide spoiler)]