Lenore Look

A young boy in Concord, Massachusetts, who loves superheroes and comes from a long line of brave Chinese farmer-warriors, wants to make friends, but first he must overcome his fear of everything.

allergic to girls, school, and other scary things

Alvin Ho

When second-grader Alvin Ho is invited to a birthday party given by a girl, his fear of everything causes him to dread going.

allergic to birthday parties, science projects, and other man-made catastrophes

Kevin Ramsay

Probably the funniest of the 4 I've read so far, and the first time Alvin didn't annoy me.

Alvin Ho is a real trip. While I am not the target demographic, this book was a fun read and is highly recommended for kids on their Covid-inspired pre-summer holiday. There were times where, in his Dad's shoes, Alvin would have been put across my lap, but kids will be kids. Quite a charming book with engaging characters. I didn't know that selective mutism was a thing, so it's nice to learn something new as well.

renee badenoch

I really wanted to like this book! It's about an #ownvoices book about an Asian American boy struggling with social anxiety disorder. It's a book about a charming, precocious 1st grader that could potentially be a read-alike for the (mostly white) emergent reader school stories (Ivy and Bean, Junie B. Jones, Dory Fantasmagory, Clementine, Waylon Tricia Springstubb's Cody Series... You get the idea). 

But stylistically this book is weird. Alvin’s character vacillates wildly from child to wise-beyond his years. For example in one scene Alvin tells his brother he has a “So-so anxiety disorder,” a clever bit of word-play mimicing the way children speak; the scene is followed up by Alvin describing the difference between girls and boys being “Girls aren’t good at robbery and mayhem,” giving Alvin an unnatural, adult-like vocabulary. 

Other out-of-place adultisms in the book are the 2nd grade class reading Thoreau, Alvin referencing the movie Psycho,, quoting Shakespeare, and calling students who are bad at arithmetic “The apes of math.” Lenore Look is a fabulously good prose writer, and these allusions are clever and funny and flow well with dialogue, but seem impossible for a child to understand without an adult reading the book aloud and explaining the jokes to them. And maybe that’s what this book is supposed to be? I think it works best as a read aloud to a child (particularly because the vocabulary is trickier than almost any 2nd grader could read on their own), but it seems to be marketed as an emergent reader. 

I think the book also reinforces some annoying gender binaries, as Alvin repeatedly discusses the difference between girls and boys, and bases any niceness he has towards girls on the premise of “this is how a gentleman treats a lady”. A scene where Alvin explains that Psychotherapists are “very smart crazy person” seems to stigmatize the (normal) experience of children who are seeking mental health assistance, and undermines the rest of the book’s themes of acceptance for neurodivergence. 

Mostly this book is okay. As was stated before, I love the way that Lenore Look writes in a warm, clever, and humorous (though not always accessible) way. I’m thrilled to see more diversity in a field of school stories that are annoyingly, overwhelmingly white. The final thing that saved this book from being “okay” to “I liked it” for me was LeUyen Pham’s expressive and adorable black ink illustrations on every page, ranging from margin-like doodles to full page images, working perfectly to enhance the text and make Alvin leap to life off the pages.

Neeky Reid

Sometimes Alvin is annoying. Imagine having to deal with a child like that in real life and Calvin who's supposed to be older isn't even the sharpest tool in the shed, it's Anibelly.

Alvin Ho allergic to girls, school, and other scary things

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