Acquired Book By: I started to notice I was receiving quite a few enquiries on my blog the last few months – in respect, to authors reaching out to me directly about reviewing their novels and one publicity firm I hadn’t worked with in the past as well. Ms Chan was the first author I responded back positively towards because of the note she attached to her query and how much the story itself resonated with me as a reader. I appreciate writers and/or publicists who take the time to look over my blog and know if their story and/or characters will be a good fit for me as a reader. I knew from what she shared with me; this particular story would be right up my street so to speak.
I received a complimentary copy of “The Legendary Mo Seto” direct from the author A.Y. Chan in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Why this particular story impressed me and why I wanted to read it:
I have had a long-held fascination and interest in Martial Arts – from the days wherein I practiced and trained in Tai Chi Chaun to the hours I’ve spent watching television series and/or movies which had a focus on Martial Arts, too. It isn’t often I find a writer who will put those elements into their stories or a grounding presence of Martial Arts as an important part of their character(s) lives, too. From that aspect of the novel, I was fully hooked and invested in curiosity to read the story! I wanted to know more about Mo Seto right away and find out what fuelled her passion for not just the practice of learning Martial Arts but the competitive side of her character as well.
However, there was a hint of a hidden secret history about her family and that out of her own courage to pursue the truth, she would find a lot to be revealled. From that angle of it, I was most intrigued, too. The last time I saw a story cleverly hide a family history secret was when I was watching the first season of Ms. Marvel and it truly captured my imagination. I need to follow-up with that series and see if they produced a second series, but I wasn’t sure if they would as the lead character was showcased in the film The Marvels.
The fact this novel was written for a Middle Grade audience also was well timed for me to read it – as I’ve been wanting to re-focus more on my readerly interests in both MG Lit and YA Lit – especially over the course of Summer. I had this idea to focus on YA Reads over Summer for quite a few years but either the intensity of storms (ie. severe lightning) would kick me offline or life would interfere, and I’d lose the hours to read the stories themselves – something always seemed to distract me from my efforts every Summer, until now. Mostly as our weather patterns are changing and the storms seem to be coming closer to the end of Summer than at the start of it, too.
I also love finding new heroines and heroes to champion in Middle Grade – especially when I find a book for MG Readers which is lovingly written for an MG Audience and isn’t writ too adult or with inclusions which would make it more Upper YA than Middle Grade. That seems to be the case a lot of the times these days in publishing and that is why I love celebrating writers who still keep the innocence and the adventure alive and well for the audience in which they are writing for rather than rushing ahead with more adult themes or content that isn’t always (I feel) suited for that audience. We all have to grow up eventually but sometimes I think we forget that there is something special and beautiful about still allowing kids to have wicked fun with their imaginations with stories that don’t have to make them feel like they need to hasten their own journey into adulthood.
The Legendary Mo Seto
by A.Y. Chan
Source: Direct from Author
Mo Seto, martial arts movie star! Has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? If only there wasn’t a height restriction to audition. But 12-year-old Modesty (Mo) Seto has never let her height get in the way before, not when she became a black belt, or when she fought the meanest boy in her class, and she’s not going to let it stop her this time! Now if only she can figure out a way to grow five inches and fool everyone at the auditions… Join Mo on an adventure (and audition) of a lifetime and find out if powerful things really do come in small packages!
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 9781665937320
Also by this author: The Legendary Mo Seto
on 4th June, 2024
Format: Hardcover Edition
Pages: 320
Published by: Aladdin Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
Follow @SimonTeen (via Instagram)
This story took the award for BEST Middle Grade Fiction.
a note about why my reading of this novel took a bit:
Shortly after I confirmed my interest to receive her novel for review consideration, it arrived by Post. I was so excited, I started to read it quite immediately but then, between life and work – the hours melted off the clock and with two work injuries over a fortnight in July – I suddenly had some extra reading time on my hands! Not the way I hoped to get back into reading, but the downtime allowed me to dissolve into stories and I was grateful for the respite to heal and tuck into the lives of the characters I was reading.
I was happily making my way through the novel when I had a bit of a difficult week in the middle of July – I was filling in for two different co-workers and my hours sort of went wonky with the clock! I didn’t have a full day off – only halves and quarters and I was so exhausted by the end of the week, I just wanted a bit of time to get back into Mo’s life and pick up the threads of her story where I had left off. I had found such a lovely pace with it the prior week and was on my way towards journeying after Mo and finishing her story – that it was so very disheartening to have to take a step back and wait to resume where I left off! Especially as the visuals Chan creates for you in the story is so wickedly brilliant, you just don’t want to put the book down. It has a lot of hidden layers to it, too and I ached to just get back into the pages and back in step with Mo!
Therefore, this review was delayed about a month out from receiving the book initially (technically by the time this posts it will be two months) but my joy of spending time with the story and characters will shine through the words I’ve left behind on my review. I am grateful the author was patient with me and let me fully absorb the story before I could tell her my reactions about it. It was just a hard luck Summer in some respects for me all round. The good news is that my injuries have mostly healed by the time this review posts on my blog – except to say, for my knees as I feel that is a longer recovery period. I never lost the ability to walk but they ache after long days and sometimes, they just get sore, too, from walking and standing whilst on the job. I blogged about this recently on #TheSundayPost as well when I mentioned this story in particular was calling me to read it.
my review of the legendary mo seto:
We enter into Mo’s life at the first tourney of the Summer, finding her distracted from her fight as she noticed her father was exiting the room. I felt her dismay and disappointment – when you’re young, the support of your parents not only bolsters your courage, but it also gives you a lot of confidence you might not fully feel. I knew something was not quite right – but what surprised me the most was how he left. It was almost as if he was leading a double-life, and this was the first time the lines blurred, and his daughter saw the ‘other side’ of how he was living. Mo is quite the young girl – she has a dedicated passion for martial arts, curates’ strong friendships and has a lot of issues with self-esteem and body positivity due to her short stature.
Mo has an adventurous streak in her which is thirsty for daring to do something extraordinary this Summer. For her, pursuing martial arts isn’t just a hobby (as her Mom would like to believe) but it is part of who she is at her core. She has a wicked fascination with a young movie star and that leads her to wanting to audition for a role in his new film. Meanwhile, we get to dip a bit into her everyday life and world; seeing her interact with her baby brother Justis and her best friend she likes to dub ‘Nacho’ as well as interacting with Nacho’s Mom and Grandfather. She sort of saw how she’s more comfortable at Nacho’s house than her own. Culturally there are a few differences of course but I felt it was more to do with how her parents interacted with her vice how Nacho’s family interacted with him. His didn’t put as much pressure on him to be something he wasn’t ready to be and hers seemed to have a distinct order and structure to how they wanted her to develop into the ideal daughter. That’s a lot of pressure for a kid of any age and it was doubly hard if the image your parents have for you isn’t the one that matches who you are right now.
There is a beautiful segue in the opening chapters wherein we get to listen to a story being told by Mo’s mother about the fenghuang which is a mythological bird in Chinese History. It has a long presence in Chinese culture and other Asian countries as well – for those of us in the West, we might generally refer to it as a Phoenix, but I felt after researching it a bit as I read this story that that might be shortchanging the actual origins of the bird itself. The beauty of the story is how Mo’s mother opened up to her daughter and shared a portion of her own living history: about how she researched different Myths and Mythologies as a student and how her travels took her to different areas of China to hear the stories by the people who knew them most. It showcased a different side to the mother and also, perhaps, opened a door in their mother-daughter relationship as I had the feeling Mo was much closer to her father due to how he went out of his way to relate to Mo.
I love the voice of Mo. She freely speaks about her insecurities and regularly has these self-talks to herself to encourage her to find her inner courage and the bravery she needs to do what her heart wants but her mind hesitates to realise she can handle. In those moments, you recognise a part of yourself in Mo. Especially in the years of your own life where your confidence in self wasn’t fully realised and when you were still sorting it all out. Your own strength, life in general and how to handle your peers and classmates. Life is muddling at times but especially so whilst growing up – because you’re still understanding the world at large whilst sorting out who you want to be as you grow, too. Mo has a distinctively relatable voice because as she experiences what she’s going through it is something that you can look back and reflect upon through your own memories. The circumstances might be different naturally but who hasn’t felt like Mo? Where you dare yourself to do something that challenges you but you’re not sure you have the ability to accomplish it?
Every girl should have a friend like Nacho in her life – the guy who is as equally bemused by his friend as he is intrigued. Mo challenges Nacho as much as she inspires him. The friendship is a beautiful one as their on the cusp of growing up but their growing together which is what makes the friendship work so wickedly. I love how she can go to Nacho no matter how late at night and he’s always ready to provide assistance or aide and do whatever he can to help Mo. You gather a sense there is a budding connection between them that moves past friendship, too, as they have such a close friendship, I could see in time that they might want to consider something else past it. Their still young yet in the story but sometimes that is how it goes in life – close childhood friends mature into a relationship by the time they reach high school.
Whilst Mo endures the audition process of the film, she dearly wants to become a part of – we get to see her face her fears and sort out a way to continue the auditions without letting on anything to her mother. Not a small feat considering that her mother tends to be overly protective of her daughter and yet, somehow, she’s missed a few details in her daughter’s life recently. I loved the moxie Mo has during this section of the story – she just doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer and sleuths out a solution when others might have just jumped ship altogether. Her pursuit of working alongside her favourite movie star is an interesting one – as I had a feeling, he might have a few secrets he was hiding from the general public. As this sometimes can happen with movie stars and Chan doesn’t disappoint as she wants to show the distinctive differences in Cody the man vs Cody the action movie hero. Reading this as an adult illuminates those layers even more but for a younger reader, especially one closer to Mo’s own age might not pick up on what Chan is trying to share with them. Unless they’ve had a similar experience and have met someone they admire, too. It is one lesson of life everyone learns at some point and one that keeps with you as it is about not putting people on pedestals and remembering that humility is as strong as an asset as courage. Except that never everyone embraces it, and some allow themselves to become too caught up in the fame and prestige of their art and careers.
When Nacho started to research secret societies and the history of them in China, I was cheering him on from the sidelines. He has Mo’s best interests at heart, and he is not just her cheerleader and best friend – he’s more like her confidante and close advisor. He respects her interests and tries to help her whenever he can – which is why when the film crew needed to meet with her parent or guardian, I had a feeling it was going to be a member of Nacho’s family who would go in lieu of her own! I was not disappointed. There are moments of angst at the set and auditions too – from suspected sabotage of the set and props to the competitive pettiness of some of the other children auditioning. Chan keeps you glued to the pages because of her entertainingly lively style as she writes the story whilst keeping it grounded and rooted in Mo’s journey.
Chaos quickly ensues during the audition process as Mo starts to see everything from a different ray of light. Including uncovering a pattern of sabotage that no one else seems to understand is happening around them. At first, I thought it was being directed towards other people on the set but as time shifted forward, part of me questioned if these acts were being directed towards Mo herself even though that isn’t implied (directly or indirectly) in the plot. Chan has brilliantly etched out just enough questionable incidents to encourage the reader to think harder about what is truly going on and what could be behind all the incidents that continue to occur, too. Whilst at the same time, Mo is finding herself betwixt and between those moments of growing up and feeling too vulnerable without the confidence to carry on. In those moments, we want to hug Mo and give her a boost of courage which we know she has insider her, but she hasn’t yet uncovered for herself.
I was very appreciative to see how Chan handled Mo and her nemesis Dax as well. These two were always fierce competitors in their Taekwondo classes and tourneys, to the point where they were never really on friendly terms with each other due to how Dax lacked sportsmanship about it all. He became an integral part of the story – following Mo’s own timeline within the audition process and of course, sharing scenes with her as they both tried to secure the role, they felt would change their lives for the better. It was a classic example of how the people who think you know everything about have more secrets being kept hidden from the world than you could imagine. And, for that I was wicked happy with how Chan slowly revealled more about Dax and in effect, humbled the reader through those revelations lateron in the storyline.
There is an EPIC conclusion to this story, and I loved how Chan opened the door for this to become a trilogy! At least, that is the liberty I took in concluding this particular story. There are three different windows into the past which can interconnect to the future and those particular windows are hidden. It would be brilliant if each installment focused on how to find and protect those windows of knowledge for future generations. On a personal note, it was a wicked riveting adventure start to finish, and I was overjoyed by how much action was inclusive to the ending! At one point you’re not even sure how Mo is going to get through the scenes because of how intensive the action became and how dramatic everything shifted to become a fight to live scenario! My favourite part of the ending, too, was how Mo realised that she had everyone she needed in her life – from family to friends to even the possibility of something more as well.
The Ledendary Mo Seto is a new Middle Grade heroine to celebrate because she reaffirms what we all know to be true of ourselves: our strength is our courage, and our courage is our confidence. We each have something unique to contribute to the world and just by being ourselves we give ourselves the freedom to live daringly fierce!
on the middle grade writing styling of a.y. chan:
Chan addresses a lot of issues children face as their growing right at the start of the story. Especially for girls’ who are unsure about the growth of their bodies and height and how they feel inside their own skin. She showcases how the shortness in stature is a big issue for Mo and how it almost defines how she sees herself to the outside world and how she interprets the outside world sees her in return. Height can be a big factor for kids growing up – although, I had the opposite issue, as my height sort of came all at once and suddenly, I was the girl in the ‘back’ row of all the school photos because I was too tall. I don’t think it’s easy for anyone growing up – as at some point, we all feel awkward and different and that’s just part of the process of developing our own comfortability in ourselves. Some might not realise it, but even tall girls struggle with their own self-confidence because for us, we feel like we’re all arms and legs and haven’t quite found that synchroneity with ourselves either. This is why I loved how Chan introduced us to Mo – as she draws you into that mental state of a young girl who’s in that early stage of sorting out who Mo is and how to accept that Mo is brilliant just as she is.
Chan has a lovely cadence of language in the story, too. It is very modern and adapted to how children might talk today as well as the phrases of choice being used, too. I love when a writer taps into a refreshing way to represent characters in the modern world as it gives not just authenticity to the era being written but it gives a bit of dimension into the hours we’re living, too. Likewise, she has a great way of showing the dichotomy of families and how families approach raising children.
I loved the imagery she created with the story about the fenghuang and how she illustrated through words the drawings in the book, too. You could see them fully represented before your own eyes due to how she depicted the images, and it added more layers to the reader to better understand the Myth and History of what we were learning, too.
Part of the joy of reading the story is trying to unearth the mystery behind the words and movements within the book Mo discovers as being part of her father’s family history and legacy. In that way, Chan takes us close to the journey alongside Mo – of rooting out what the symbols represent in English and how as Mo translates the book itself, she’s not just discovering long lost ancestral truths but she’s sorting out how to use her own heritage as a method of understanding a bit of her present, too. Not that she has fully connected the dots on that as we walk alongside her, but I had a feeling that the book would take on more meaning for Mo by the time story ends. It was clever how we get to peer into Mo’s life from different angles of it – from her pursuit of wanting to continue martial arts training despite her mother’s insistence to discontinue it; to her friendship with Nacho and her fortitude of courage to try out for an audition in a movie her mother knows nothing about. Each layer of her life is rife with moments of growing up and growing into herself – of finding her own path and of embracing who she is in the here and now. I felt Chan did a wonderful job writing out the layers of the story whilst entertaining the reader at the same time by how she chooses to give Mo such a lot of depth whilst we took the adventure alongside her.
This book review is courtesy of the author:
About A.Y. Chan
A. Y. Chan grew up in Canada’s Greater Toronto Area reading all the middle grade and young adult books she could get her hands on. To this day, those remain her favorite genres. After achieving her black belt in Taekwondo, she explored other martial arts, such as Wing Chun, Hapkido, and Muay Thai. These days, she continues her martial arts training some mornings, writes in the afternoons, takes long walks to muddle out plot points, and falls asleep reading.
Closing Thoughts:
This is definitely a book for readers of all ages who want to read about an adventurously fierce young girl who takes-on the challenge to prove that nothing is impossible. I loved how Chan also infused the story with cheeky humour (such as describing the plot points of each Cody Kwok movie) and how she tucked in so many lovely life lessons into the sequencing of the story, too. She truly has written a wicked smart heroine for readers who are seeking the kind of story which uplifts your spirits and encourages your own passions to be pursued even if on the path to achieving them the road becomes a bit more adverse than planned.
I am full of gratitude to have this story come into my life this Summer as it gave me such a lot of readerly joy to become full immersed into the life of Mo and to champion her story!
This review is cross-posted to LibraryThing.
{SOURCES: Cover art of “The Legendary Mo Seto”, book synopsis, author biography and photo were provided by the author A.Y. Chan and are used with permission. LibraryThing banner provided by LibraryThing and is used with permission. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Blog graphics created by Jorie via Canva: Children’s Lit Summer of Reading Book Review banner, 11th Annual Jorie Loves A Story Cuppa Book Love Awards badge (Coffee and Tea Clip Art Set purchased on Etsy; made by rachelwhitetoo.) and the Comment Box Banner.}
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Oh, this sounds like a wonderful story! I, too, love MG books that actually *feel* MG.
Martial arts have never been a big thing for me, but I’ve gotten more interested—though still not involved—since my niece and nephew have taken classes. I know the feeling of needing a parent to support you during a performance, though, and fortunately never had one of my parents walk out at the start of a recital.
Hallo, Hallo Nicole,
This has become a bit of an issue for me over the years – as finding MG which *feel* MG is almost too rare whereas it used to be more commonplace. This is why I love to champion the authors I find who are writing wicked awesome stories for the MGLit audience (and for those of us adults who still love reading these stories, too!) as it is a breath of fresh air! :) I think it just depends how martial arts finds you. Sometimes it is a good fit for someone and other times, as in my case, it was a good fit but the opportunities to pursue it (through practice, etc) were taken away as instructors moved shop or just left the area completely. I do wish I could have maintained Tai Chi since I was 18 as that would have been 30 years practicing it in only a few short years. Without the group practice though I didn’t have a big enough space to do it justice and it just fell out of my hours and days whereas it used to be something I looked forward to doing every weekend. I can relate to you though – I never had a parent walk out on me either during any of the sports (competitions) I was in either, but I can imagine how it must sting for the child when they see that happen and then, be left with a big question mark as to ‘why’? Which is how this story begins,…
Thanks for visiting with me as I am enjoying seeing people’s reactions to Mo’s story.
WONDERFUL review! I’m glad you looked it as much as I did!
Hallo, Hallo Jodie,
Thanks for visiting with me. And, thank you for your lovely compliment. It was my Summer #bookhug choice for sure! I can’t wait to see what comes next by this author.