My Mom Is Trying to Ruin My Life is a cute book about a little girl who is embarrassed by her moms constant attention. She also has a hard time with all of Dad's rules. She fantasizes about running away, but her own daydream teachers her how important her parents are in her life. I think it would make a great book for kids in second or third grade who are becoming more independent and more concerned about the approval of their peers. ( )

The young girl-narrator of this amusing picture-book freely admits that her mother has many nice qualities, and does many nice things, but she maintains nevertheless that her mom is ruining her life. Listing the five ways this ruination is occurring, the girl imagines how she might escape, and how her mother might end up in jail for her "crimes." The same process is chronicled with her father, who is also ruining her life. But then the girl begins to imagine what life would be like without those pesky parents, and she soon comes to the inevitable conclusion: she loves them, and is happy to have them around...

A sweet, ultimately heartwarming little tale about an imaginative young girl and her parents, My Mom Is Trying to Ruin My Life taps into two common enough childhood experiences: finding parents embarrassing, and chaffing at the restrictions they impose. The amusing, over-the-top scenarios the little girl imagines in the story will keep young listeners entertained, while the accompanying watercolor artwork by Diane Goode, who also illustrated Kate Feiffer's President Pennybaker, accentuates the humor of the text. I enjoyed this one quite a bit, more than I thought I would, picking it up. Something about the cover led me to expect another spoiled little girl story (something akin to Louise the Big Cheese, or Eloise), but our narrator here is just an ordinary girl with a good heart. Recommended to anyone looking for fun picture-books about the parent-child bond, and the ways that children simultaneously rely upon and sometimes wish to escape their mothers and fathers. ( )

Great book for elementary school-aged students. The book, written in first person as by a child, talks of how life would be so grand if the mother was not in the picture. Her constant presence and oversight is frustrating. But, then, the child realizes that his/her world would be so much worse without that security and love ( )

I liked this book for many reasons. First, the characters and plot is believable and something that many children can relate too. No matter how close you are with your parents, children are always going to think they are embarrassing at one point in their childhood. The writing had the readers engaged the whole because of the descriptive details the author used. For example, when the little girl was trying to sneak out she said “…pedal away as fast as I can, and then, when she catches up to me, keep pedaling until I pedal down a steep hill into a muddy hole. She’ll drive down the steep hill into the muddy hole, and her car will get stuck.” This detailed plan keeps the readers interested as to what the little girl will do next. The illustrations also enhance the story, as they are simple yet appropriate. They help give the readers a mental picture because they match what the words on the page say. I think the big idea of this story is even though your family may be embarrassing; you would be lost without them. At the end of the book, the little girl realizes that if both her parents weren’t there, she would have someone to make her food, read her stories before bed, protect her from bad dreams, etc. Therefore, your family is everything. ( )

This is a humorous story of how a young girl thinks that her mom and dad are conspiring to ruin her life by embarrassing her and so on. This would be a fun story to read aloud in class. This is a good example of a contemporary realistic fiction text, because all of the events are somewhat believable and easy to relate to. Who, as a child, has not thought that their parents were trying to ruin their life? It is humorous, because all of the events that take place in the book are funny.
Medium: Watercolor