My Name Is Mina by David Almond

My Name Is Mina by David Almond is the follow up to Skellig, previously reviewed on the blog. It is the pre-quel to the story that takes place in Skellig. To be honest, I don't really know what to make of this book, and if I hadn't already written here on the blog in Skellig's review that I would also read My Name Is Mina, I don't know that I would have finished the book. While I was reading this book, I was also reading another book at the same time, so it took longer to finish both than it normally would have.

The story is told entirely from Mina's perspective through the mechanism of her journal entries in which she shares eccentric writings and observations, including life musings, stories, and extraordinary activities. She also looks back on the miserable days she spent in school and what lead to her mother's decision to pull her out of the school and home school her instead.

Mina was eccentric in Skellig, but My Name Is Mina reveals the depths of her misfit-ness. It reveals how she feels as if she doesn't fit in at school, how the teachers and school system fail her basically because she is not your average kid and thus they don't know what to do with her. Mina is very much an oddball loner type, who doesn't have any friends, and the story carries right up to the point where she decides to take a brave step and make the effort to make a new friend and that new friend is Michael, whose family has just moved in next door.

Readers and fans of Skellig will enjoy this book. I can't say that I enjoyed it because this is one of those stories in which it feels like 'nothing really happens,' and at the end of stories like this, I'm always left wondering what was the point?

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