Book Review: Saige Paints The Sky

Saige Paints The Sky continues the story of Saige Copeland, a real-life fourth grader who fights to bring art classes back to her elementary school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My 7-year-old sister and I absolutely loved the first book. We totally enjoyed it. It was a given that this one should be equally as impressive, as well. Sadly, that was not the case. This book bored us both to tears. Thanks to this book, story time became a huge fight and when I could get her to sit down and to listen to it, she just made faces at me or called me names... and that's when I managed to get her to pay me and Saige any attention. Being bullied by a 7-year-old for my poor choice in reading material is no fun. 

I started thinking, because my little sister loved Saige so much, what went wrong with this book? I didn't have any fun reading this one either and I ended up reading the last half by myself, simply because I can't stand leaving a book unread. It was sooo dull, I couldn't wait for it to end. We are now reading an old American Girl favorite, 'Meet Addy' with much better results. So anyways back to Saige, what was wrong with the much anticipated (in our house anyways) second book? The only thing I can think of is that nothing exciting really ever happens. Saige has a very mild personality. She's obviously a wonderful kid, but nothing exciting enough to write a book about happened to her after the first book. In the first book she was preparing for a show during a parade and trying to get people excited about art classes and her grandma broke her arm and there was some friend drama. This one was just so lukewarm. The only reason I could see American Girl continuing the story is so we can see her complete the big goal of bringing art back to her school. That doesn't even happen in this book. I'm really not sure what the point is?

Don't get me wrong Saige is brilliant and very talented, she's a great role model for any girl and that alone I guess sort of makes it worth reading if you're like 9 or 10, but thinking back to when I was that age, I don't think I'd still have enjoyed this one. I think maybe it's just that Saige is such a goody-two-shoes, which I feel horrible complaining about. But there's a lack of spunk that most of the fictional American Girls have. Molly throws her brother's undies out the window, Felicity stole a horse, Samantha snuck out in the middle of the night to see her grandma's servant... it's those little human moments of making mistakes that keeps the book engaging and sadly this book really lacked those.