The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

Rating: Not for me

Reading Level: Late Elementary, Middle School

Possible Concerns:

• Romance/Crushes: One main plot of the book has to do with asking a girl out (or not). There are dances and mentions of public displays of affection. There is a kiss.
• Occult/Idolatry: The premise is whether an origami finger puppet has psychic powers. Some kids actually believe a paper origami yoda can predict the future, give advice, etc. People come ask the Yoda questions. At one point a kid actually tries to channel the force.
• Name calling/dehumanizing words. Calling someone a loser, dipwad, weird, pain in the butt, etc. The kids are particularly mean/rude to an outcast: “Man you’re just embarrassing us…” p. 17 “can’t you crawl back in your hole? Didn’t you embarrass us enough the last time?” p. 20 “making us all look like losers.” This treatment of an outcast was one of my least favorite parts of the book.
• Body humor. Picking nose, barfing,
• Negativity. That attitude when everything is negative comes through: “Lance is weird” “he suddenly decided he could dance, and did this jumping around weird thing.”
• Big cast. It was hard for me to follow all the different characters.
• Comparison. At one point a boy settles for “Not the girl I like best.” This could haunt young girls.
• Passive males. Males wrestling with finding courage to ask a girl to dance. “We wish the girls would just ask us.” Then, hoping to never have to do it: “maybe she’d get jealous and ask me and I wouldn’t have to ask her.”. This just doesn’t model courage and honor.
• Negativity towards writing/school: a kid says he hates to write things down because it’s too much like homework.
• Obesity. A kid says his teacher looks like Jabba the Hutt
• Divorce. My grandmother is at her house all the time now that she and my granddad got divorced
• Disrespect to Native Americans. One time a native American came to school to tell us about his traditions. Then he asked if there were any questions. Dwight asked what did you wear for underwear before Columbus brought regular underwear? p.53
• Normalizing watching R rated movies. Everybody else is going to see it.

Things I liked:

• The outcast kid ends up getting the girl he likes
• The kids end up accepting (sort of) the outcast
• Origami is pretty great.

Although I didn’t detect any political agenda, the negative attitudes and cruelty to the outcast really got me. Also, they really pay up the “is the Yoda magic” thing, which sounds crazy but even I was like oh my gosh are they going to say it is magic? So I could see this being a bad influence on kids wavering in their faith or with an unhealthy interest the occult.

You could certainly find worse, but for me the bad outweighs the good on this one.