Review: Becoming Jo - Sophie McKenzie

Review: Becoming Jo - Sophie McKenzie - April 2019

With the anniversary of Little Women coming up and the fact that renditions of classic stories are one of my favorite tropes, I grabbed from the library a handful of Little Women renditions. This one found in our children's fiction section is called Becoming Jo. We have the four sisters as usual and Mrs. March who works as a social worker for refugees and Mr. March is over in the army working as a humanitarian Minister.  Like the originals we have the four sisters loving their different hobbies from Jo being our writer, Amy - the spoiled younger sister, Beth - the pianist and Meg - the fashionista. Our main male lead comes in the form of Lateef who was a refugee from Iraq.  Like the original Lateef and Jo hit it off and become the best of friends only for Amy to be jealous and since we are in the modern world she deletes all Jo's writing off the computer and the back-ups. This part unlike the many times I've read it when I was younger, I felt so much grief for Jo as I know what it would be like to lose all that hard work and never get it back. Also in the original we see Amy fall off the horse and in this book, she gets sideswiped by a car. Beth learns to play the Piano with Lateef's Uncle Jim.  Becoming Jo by Sophie McKenzie would be a great way to introduce young girls aged 8+ to Little Women.