hard time to be a reviewer

I picked up this book at the library, to possibly add to my adoption books bibliography. But the more I looked at it, the more uneasy I became:



I think the problem is pretty clear from the cover: The girl looks like she's one step away from pulling a rickshaw. Or is it just me? I looked at five or six reviews of the book and only one, from Horn Book, criticized the stereotypical pictures. It was also only one of two (the other being Kirkus) that noted that the book overall isn't very good. In fact, several reviewers considered this book exceptional, which I find almost as staggering as the fact that it got published at all.

I'm really not sure what the point of this post is. Mostly, I think I feel lonely. I'm not even convinced that I'm "right," even with the support of the unknown reviewer from Horn Book. Who knows, maybe we are both oversensitive in the same way.