Genie Scheme

Jones, Kimberly K. 2009. The Genie Scheme. Simon & Schuster. 179 pages.

Janna, our heroine, has the fortune to get her own genie. Janna who is always ever complaining about her life. How awful it is that she doesn't have every little thing she wants. How awful it is to be her. Always focusing on what she doesn't have and dreaming--in big, big ways--of all the hundreds of millions of things she wants, no she needs to be happy. She wants all of column A and B. How does this girl get her own genie? Well, she sees a homeless woman in a thrift store trying to buy a winter hat. She doesn't quite have enough money for it--though the hat is in far from perfect condition--so she leaves the store without it. Janna spends her own money--the money she'd saved up for several weeks to buy the new book in her favorite series--to buy the hat and gives it away to this old woman. Later that day--or perhaps the next day?--the old woman suddenly appears in Janna's bedroom proclaiming herself to be Janna's very-own-genie. But is Janna responsible enough to have a genie? Is anyone ever really responsible enough to have a genie?

I have mixed feelings on The Genie Scheme. On the one hand, it is easy to read. It's far from boring. There really aren't any pacing problems. It wasn't hard to fall into. (There was no 'adjustment' period where you flirted with the idea of abandoning, etc.) But on the other hand, the tone of this one was a bit moralistic. A bit message-y. A bit let's-teach-this-spoiled-brat-a-lesson. Were the lessons being imparted good ones? Yes. No doubt about it. Compassion and generosity and thinking of others before oneself. Of thinking about the world around them. The environment around them. All good messages. And no doubt the main character, the heroine, is a better person for all the moralizing done within its pages.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
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