Review of Gro
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- evraealtana
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Review of Gro
Wealthy Viking parents Yrsa and Odger have high hopes for their intelligent, energetic daughter, Gro. But Gro fights for her independence from an early age, rejecting all romantic suitors in favor of a free-spirited life. Her father, in frustration, forces her to marry a poor musician, casting Gro into a squalid and back-breaking way of life that is very different from her comfortable upbringing. To forge a path for herself out of the tatters of her ruined life, she will need all her strength, plus a few new friends and several important life lessons.
Gro, written by Eelonqa K. Harris, is a children’s story about a headstrong Viking girl finding her way through a world that was not built for people like her. Through her travels and hardships, she learns about grit, self-reliance, and the power of community. What I liked most about the story was that Gro, who was only expected to marry and be a submissive wife, uses her intelligence and her energy instead to craft her own, unexpected life path.
The main story ends at a turning point for Gro, and there are two endings from which the reader can choose, depending on how the reader believes Gro should respond to her situation. I loved this “choose your own adventure” style, which gives the reader partial autonomy over the story. Unfortunately, the two endings are much too similar in my opinion, with some phrases even repeated verbatim. Readers are very likely to read both endings at some point, and when they do, they will notice that Gro’s outcomes are remarkably similar regardless of what she chose, undermining the power of her having made a choice in the first place. I wanted to see Gro’s life veer in wildly different directions based on her choice, and I was somewhat disappointed that that wasn’t the case.
With only 36 pages of large-print text, the story is a quick read that appears at first to be aimed at children approximately five to seven years of age. However, the vocabulary used in the story would make it an exceedingly challenging read for that audience. For example, when Yrsa tries to find Gro a husband, one “cause for constant vexation for Yrsa” is that Gro is “so self-contained and capricious withal that no match [comes] about” (page 5). Because of this higher-level vocabulary, as well as sporadic words from Old Norse such as “drengr”, the use of context clues will be critically important. A child reading this book without the benefit of an adult to explain the text would need to be slightly older, perhaps seven to nine years of age, to make sense of it.
With only a few minor errors, the book appears polished and seems to have been appropriately edited. There is no violence, no profanity, and no discussion of religion. The only tangential mention of sex is when Yrsa discovers that she is “with child”, with no more detail given than that. Therefore, I think it is the high-level language, rather than the content, that limits the audience.
Gro earns a score of 3 out of 4 for its beautiful, vibrant illustrations and its compelling story about a quirky girl fighting to carve her own place in the world. It loses one star partly for the mismatch between the advanced vocabulary used and the apparent target audience and partly for the pronounced similarity between the two endings. It would most appeal to children approximately seven to nine years of age who are interested in Vikings and female empowerment.
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Gro
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