Header image with four cats and the text: Pussreboots, a book review nearly every day. Online since 1997
Now 2025 Previous Articles Road Essays Road Reviews Author Black Authors Title Source Age Genre Series Format Inclusivity LGBTA+ Art Portfolio Purchase Art WIP

Recent posts


Month in review

Reviews
All Summer Long by Hope Larson
Bat and the End of Everything by Elana K. Arnold
Circle by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen
Eggs Benedict Arnold by Laura Childs
Elegant Yokai Apartment Life, Volume 1 by Hinowa Kouzuki
Everlasting Nora by Marie Miranda Cruz
Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts
The Fire Cat by Esther Averill
Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara by Colleen Morton Busch
Heartwood Hotel 1: A True Home by Kallie George
Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake
Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley
Knife Edge by Andrew Lane
Like Vanessa by Tami Charles
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Mothership by Martin Leicht and Isla Neal
Murders and Metaphors by Amanda Flower
An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
Prose and Cons by Amanda Flower
The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum
A Scandal in Scarlet by Vicki Delany
Secret Coders 6: Monsters & Modules by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes
Skyward: The Story of Female Pilots in WWII by Sally Deng
A Sprinkle of Spirits by Anna Meriano
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagen
Wee Sister Strange by Holly Grant
You Are Light by Aaron Becker

Miscellaneous
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (April 01)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (April 08)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (April 15)
Looking ahead to July
March 2019 Sources
March 2019 Summary
Reading for Work
The value of ebooks
Weekends

Road Essays
FF0000: Orphans to the city by way of the interstate

CCFFFF: Siblings to Utopia by Way of the Cornfield: a reading of "Slumber Party.

CCFFCC: Siblings through the maze to utopia

CCFF99: siblings to utopia via the labyrinth

Road Narrative Update for March 2019

Previous month



Rating System

5 stars: Completely enjoyable or compelling
4 stars: Good but flawed
3 stars: Average
2 stars: OK
1 star: Did not finish


Privacy policy

This blog does not collect personal data. It doesn't set cookies. Email addresses are used to respond to comments or "contact us" messages and then deleted.


Circle: 04/23/19

Circle

Circle by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen is the conclusion to the Shapes trilogy. It continues on the uncomfortable path created in Square by the gendering of Circle.

I get that he/him ends up often being the default in English. There's a movement to rely more on the single they/them and I think these three books would have been better without a gender binary.

But here we are, now with a third book from the point of view of the only female in the series. Circle is playing hide and seek with Triangle and Square. She sets the rules and there is one big important one: don't go into the cave behind the waterfall.

Dude-bro Triangle has no respect for Circle or her rules and immediately goes into the cave. Square did nothing to stop him and offers no help at finding his friend.

So basically it's a cute shape reiteration of typical male micro-aggressions against women. Circle should have just left Triangle and Square alone to sort their own self-imposed problems out. She gave them one rule and they ignored it. She owes them nothing.

Except, women are raised to be caretakers of men. For less pay. For less personal agency. For less respect. For expectations of personal harm. This book plays into all of that socializing of girls and women with zero self awareness.

Two stars

Comments (2)


Lab puppy
Name:
Email (won't be posted):
Blog URL:
Comment:


Comment #1: Wednesday, April 24, 2019 at 22:36:38

Kathe E Douglas

Cool interpretation. I didn't see it that way, so thanks for pointing it out. Enough time has passed since reading the other two that it didn't register as part of a triptych at all. I was all caught up in the feeling of menace, pure emotional response.



Comment #2: Saturday, April 27, 2019 at 20:58:00

Pussreboots

The menace would have been more fun without the unnecessary gendering.

Tumblr Mastadon Flickr Facebook Facebook Contact me

1997-2025 Sarah Sammis