Mango Delight

MangoDelight by Fracaswell Hymna, 219 pages

Mango’s life is pretty good.  She has a best friend, a loving family, does well in school, and loves running in her club after school.  Then Mango wins a race and Brook, her best friend, gets jealous.  Brook gets a cell phone and immediately starts hanging out with the group of girls who have phones, led by her former arch rival, Hailey Joanne.  Mango is hurt and confused, especially when she accidentally sees a mean text that Brook sent about Mango’s mom.  Mango’s life is suddenly in shambles, both at school, and at home.  To confuse matters even more, Hailey Joanne starts to be nice to Mango.  Mango isn’t sure how her life got turned upside down and isn’t sure how to fix it.  This book was all right.  They story was decent and would probably be fairly popular right now because of the subject matter, but the book is very dated with a lot of references to text speak that will mean it probably won’t go over well in a few years.  Also, although Mango is confused about a lot of things in this book, there is very little that isn’t clear to the reader, unless it’s because you’re dizzy from being hit over the head with the author’s message.  I can’t say that I would recommend it, unless I had a kid that wanted a story like this by an African American author.  Then, I might consider it.