Myra in the Middle

By Seetha Dodd

Illustrated by Peter Cheong

Reviewed by Zewlan Moor

This is Seetha Dodd’s debut junior fiction novel.  When writing she draws on her Malaysian–Indian heritage, and favours themes of family, identity and belonging, Seetha aims to write stories that empower children to challenge stereotypes and to celebrate uniqueness in all forms.

Myra is seven years old, good at maths, and keen to try out for soccer. She loves her grandmother Muthashi, who listens to her chatter when other members of the family are too busy and distracted.

Myra’s family is ethnically Indian, but moved to Australia via Malaysia. The book neatly explores some issues that commonly affect Australian children from non-Anglo backgrounds. One is the difficulty of having unusual names. Myra is determined that her brother should get a name that is both easy to spell and easy to pronounce. So when her parents decide to name him Zeeshan, meaning strength, she is disappointed, but must learn to go with the flow.

Another issue is being mistaken for her friend Laila by her teacher, presumably because they are both brown. Myra has calculated that Mrs Robinson has made that mistake 50 percent of the time! Will Myra continue to let it go or will she take a stand?

This last example demonstrates a really clever part of the book. When Myra is talking about Mrs Robinon’s mistake, she ties it into her maths lesson and draws a relevant pie chart. She then draws a pie chart representing her mother’s attention, and how it has changed from halves to thirds with the addition of a new baby. This highlights what is preoccupying Myra, but is also an innovative way of presenting information visually. It will also appeal to kids who like Maths, and perhaps encourage them to develop a love of reading as well.

Similar techniques are used, with the use of tables and number lines upfront in the first chapter, helping to establish Myra’s voice and way of looking at the world, which will likely be relatable to many seven year olds. The fact that it makes Maths fun and relevant is an added bonus.

Myra’s handwritten wordplay and puzzles; the generous use of white space; and appealing black-and-white line drawings by Peter Cheong all contribute to the text being inviting to a newly confident reader. As in all of Cheong’s work, he avoids stereotypical depictions of characters’ race and ethnicity, with not a sari or salwar kameez in sight in his depictions of Muthashi. Instead, she is a young-looking grandma in a blouse and pants.

This book will have broad appeal to children aged 6-8, particularly children from migrant families who will be excited to see themselves in the funny, thoughtful, chatty character of Myra. I hope to spend more time with Myra in a series. And I expect many middle children will want to too.

Myra in the Middle is 162 pages of a satisfying story, centred on the main character coming to terms with the changes brought about by a new baby in the family. Dividing the book into 22 bite-sized chapters will contribute to a sense of accomplishment on the part of the reader. Myra works out that there are many ways she is in the middle, and that it is not necessarily a bad thing. You can count the ways when you read the book for yourself!

(The theme of difficult to pronounce names, and the assertiveness needed to live with them, is explored in Sandhya Parappukkaran and Michelle Pereira’s The Boy Who Tried to Shrink His Name, while the theme of mistaken identity, or #sorrywrongasian or #sorrywrongbrownwoman , is explored in Zewlan Moor and Peter Cheong’s Nothing Alike. These picture books could be used as comparative texts when exploring themes of personal identity, friendship and diversity.)

UQP 2026

Seetha Dodd

Peter Cheong

Zewlan Moor is the author of Nothing Alike,  The Bill Dup and Our World: Philippines