A sympathetic portrayal of a typical 11-year-old trying to fit in, with a bit of Korean flair.
Exploring her Korean heritage for a school project leads Canadian fifth-grader Krista Kim into new territory with family, friends, and food.
Being the sole Korean girl in her class seems to have kept Krista out of the popular-girl group. Luckily, her best friend, Jason, who is white, has been by her side since preschool. He even likes to eat kimchi! When one of the cool girls surprisingly extends a birthday-party invitation, everyone encourages Krista to attend. Even her snobby older sister, Tori, reconstructs and adapts a traditional Korean dress, called a hanbok, so Krista will look K-pop fashionable. Encouraged by her sister and grandmother, Krista begins changing to fit into the popular crowd. As the story progresses in first person, Krista realizes she has been given conflicting advice from her loved ones. Tori helps her dress for success, but that attracts unwanted attention. Her blunt and opinionated grandmother, who favors Tori, pushes Krista to step out of character by wearing makeup and more-feminine clothing. Meanwhile, the person who knows her best, Jason, keeps floating farther and farther away. Author Ahn writes authentically about the struggle of assimilation while maintaining cultural tradition in a mostly white elementary school. Krista is not a vibrant heroine, but her struggles with identity and friendship will nonetheless resonate.
A sympathetic portrayal of a typical 11-year-old trying to fit in, with a bit of Korean flair. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77260-063-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.
A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.
Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean. (authors’ note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Japanese-American Aki and her family operate an asparagus farm in Westminster, Calif., until they are summarily uprooted and...
Two third-grade girls in California suffer the dehumanizing effects of racial segregation after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1942 in this moving story based on true events in the lives of Sylvia Mendez and Aki Munemitsu.
Japanese-American Aki and her family operate an asparagus farm in Westminster, Calif., until they are summarily uprooted and dispatched to an internment camp in Poston, Ariz., for the duration of World War II. As Aki endures the humiliation and deprivation of the hot, cramped barracks, she wonders if there’s “something wrong with being Japanese.” Sylvia’s Mexican-American family leases the Munemitsu farm. She expects to attend the local school but faces disappointment when authorities assign her to a separate, second-rate school for Mexican kids. In response, Sylvia’s father brings a legal action against the school district arguing against segregation in what eventually becomes a successful landmark case. Their lives intersect after Sylvia finds Aki’s doll, meets her in Poston and sends her letters. Working with material from interviews, Conkling alternates between Aki and Sylvia’s stories, telling them in the third person from the war’s start in 1942 through its end in 1945, with an epilogue updating Sylvia’s story to 1955.Pub Date: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58246-337-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Tricycle
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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