Book 1: Step into the Adventure of a Lifetime

Friendly Warning: I get political in this post, because this book is nothing but a Progressive propaganda piece.

Why We Chose This Book

My family clocked over 13,000 miles on the road this summer. I thought we’d be able to crack through a dozen or more audio books together, but the kids actually preferred to read on their own and sleep most of the way. I in turn listened to more music than anything, but also had some good conversations with the wifey.

When it was just the kids and me in the car, though, from Georgia to Utah, we opted for whatever books we could find available on Libby. Working from a list of titles my daughter (12) drafted from her friend’s library, we chose this first book in a new series by Pari Thomson. Although the beginning few chapters got my son (14) and me slightly interested in the story, it was overall not at all to our tastes—a feminine fairytale and a vehicle for Wokeness.

We persisted to the end, however, because I wanted to give the book a fair shake in my review. That is, I wanted to excoriate the book properly after having finished it entirely, not simply give it my knee-jerk reaction.

Story Summary

The story opens with eleven-year-old Daisy and her mother, Leah Thistledown, chasing stories for Leah’s job as a London-based journalist. Once again, there’s no father in the picture, but it’s explained that Leah’s husband, the photographer she met in Iran, had been killed earlier in a car crash.

Leah must follow a lead of deforestation in Peru, so she leaves Daisy in the care of a strict boarding school for 2 weeks. When Leah goes missing in Peru, however, Daisy runs away and eventually finds herself entering a magical world named Greenwild, where she not only recognizes her own nature-related powers called “green magic,” but also realizes that she has some important part to play in this world as it fights against the evils that are trying to destroy it—and, as it turns out, Earth itself.

A Christian Father’s Opinion

When we finished this book, I had a captive audience in the backseat of my car and took the time to talk my kids through my thoughts on the book. After praising the imaginative plot, I pretty much lectured them about three things I absolutely hated about it, things that are proof to me that McMillan shamelessly bowed to Biden-era Wokism by plugging political agendas to middle schoolers. These three agendas were feminism, LGBTQ+ issues, and Climate Change.

Feminism

It doesn’t take a reader long to realize that this is a female-heavy book. Nothing wrong with that. So was Anne of Green Gables. Reading further, though, you come to realize that Pari Thomson isn’t just pro-girl, she’s anti-man. While nearly every leader and hero in the book is a woman, the men go in the exact opposite direction. Just take a look at her cast of male characters:

• Craven is a devil
• Malarkey is a moron
• Deputy Ferris Shelldrake is a wicked fiend
• Hal’s father is a fool
• Ivy’s dad is an abusive authoritarian
• Daisy’s grandfather—bravely divorced by the grandmother—is evil

The only positive male characters were these:

• Indigo, but that’s likely because he’s raise by gay dads (also good guys)
• Cuthbert, though we only see in him for about 2 seconds
• Daisy’s dad, who’s dead
• Hal—who’s not even real

According to Thomson, the only worthwhile men are dead, gay, or imaginary. It’s enough to make me want to throw the book across the room.

LGBTQ+ Issues

As already stated, Indigo’s “parents” are a gay couple. While these characters were just a passing remark early in the book (“Neither of my dads are good at cooking,” Chapter 12), they show up in Chapter 53 as “Papa” and “Dad” and prove to be the nicest characters in the book.

Not only that, they’re also the only people with a happy marriage! Go figure. While all those heterosexual monsters’ marriages end in abuse, divorce, and death, the gays provide structure and balance to the home—just as god intended it.

In the immortal words of my own mother: “Barf.”

Climate Change

The final preachy issue of Thomson and McMillan’s Woke agenda is the fact that “industry” is killing the planet and its magical little green bugs. Specifically, the villains are the miners and foresters, literally called “the grim reapers” of the gray world.

What gets me is the illogic of it all. Have people like Thomson or A.O.C. or any of these Green New Deal nutjobs ever flown in a plane around the world and seen how alive this place is? Have any of them ever considered what life would be without the industries they despise so much? After all, they’re not looking for regulation but obliteration! Without mining, where would these hippies get the computers to write their books or the phones to share their propaganda? Without forestry, where would Thomson get the paper for the books that are her very bread and butter? “E-books,” she says. “Oh, wait…”

Such industries are already regulated out the wazoo. Foresters especially end up planting more trees than they harvest, replenishing the earth that they’re accused of destroying. Obviously poaching is evil, and tactics along the Amazon have been murderous and vile. But Thomson is not just attacking the tree cartels of South America—she’s targeting all the industries. They are in her own words “The Grim Reapers.”

People like this author just don’t get it, and their abuse of power to poison the minds of children with their faux facts (literally “political science”) is maddening. Pari Thomson would be living in a tent woven from ethically-harvested palm fronds, if it weren’t for the industries she so hates, and I wish people would put these logical conclusions together before spouting their Progressive talking points.

Conclusion

Ok, that got me more riled up than it should have. But I’ll say it again, I hated this book. It’s a poisonous vehicle for Wokism the likes of which I heartily commit to exposing as I see them and with what little voice I have.

If you agree, you’re welcome. If not, sorry, but I’m not sorry.

©2025 E.T.