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Title: Beacon Hill Boys
Author: Ken Mochizuki
Number of Pages: 208 pages
Book Number/Goal: 22/75 for 2009
My Rating: 2/5
Review: It's 1972 and Dan Inagaki is a pretty average kid, decent grades, but a bit of a slacker. Compared to his older brother, Brad, though, who's perfect at everything, Dan is a total loser, especially in the eyes of his family. They also don't like the way he stands up for himself and for Asian Americans in general, demanding Asian American history be taught in school and books about Asian Americans be added to the library. Better to keep your head down and avoid pissing people off.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. Most books about Japanese Americans are about WWII and/or the aftermath of the camps, so it's nice to have a book that's about something else. However, the writing is just not very good. It's not horrible, but just bad in that solidly mediocre way. The dialogue is the worst, not natural at all. I gather the author mostly writes picture books, and I think he should probably stick to that.
The story itself was decent enough, though, and kept my interest pretty well (the book is short and doesn't have a lot of text per page, so I zoomed through it). I'm definitely glad it exists to provide some variety in terms of Japanese-American lit, but I just really wish it were better written.
I especially liked this section, where Dan asks his history teacher if they can learn about the internment camps (which his own parents refuse to tell him about):
He peered at me over the tops of his bifocals and grunted, "I don't care about any Japanese history. We only teach American history around here."
But these camps happened in the US. And people in the camps were American citizens. Didn't that make it American history?
"Look, son, I have a few months to cover over two hundred years. I only cover what's important."
Ouch. The worst thing is knowing that while things have changed some, many people still do think like that. "Why should there be black history month?" ("Where is white history month!?") "Studying Native Americans/black Americans/Asian Americans/Mexican Americans/anyone other than whites is just political correctness gone wild!" There are still many people who think that if it didn't happen to white people (if it was something white people did to people of color), it's not important.
Author: Ken Mochizuki
Number of Pages: 208 pages
Book Number/Goal: 22/75 for 2009
My Rating: 2/5
Review: It's 1972 and Dan Inagaki is a pretty average kid, decent grades, but a bit of a slacker. Compared to his older brother, Brad, though, who's perfect at everything, Dan is a total loser, especially in the eyes of his family. They also don't like the way he stands up for himself and for Asian Americans in general, demanding Asian American history be taught in school and books about Asian Americans be added to the library. Better to keep your head down and avoid pissing people off.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. Most books about Japanese Americans are about WWII and/or the aftermath of the camps, so it's nice to have a book that's about something else. However, the writing is just not very good. It's not horrible, but just bad in that solidly mediocre way. The dialogue is the worst, not natural at all. I gather the author mostly writes picture books, and I think he should probably stick to that.
The story itself was decent enough, though, and kept my interest pretty well (the book is short and doesn't have a lot of text per page, so I zoomed through it). I'm definitely glad it exists to provide some variety in terms of Japanese-American lit, but I just really wish it were better written.
I especially liked this section, where Dan asks his history teacher if they can learn about the internment camps (which his own parents refuse to tell him about):
He peered at me over the tops of his bifocals and grunted, "I don't care about any Japanese history. We only teach American history around here."
But these camps happened in the US. And people in the camps were American citizens. Didn't that make it American history?
"Look, son, I have a few months to cover over two hundred years. I only cover what's important."
Ouch. The worst thing is knowing that while things have changed some, many people still do think like that. "Why should there be black history month?" ("Where is white history month!?") "Studying Native Americans/black Americans/Asian Americans/Mexican Americans/anyone other than whites is just political correctness gone wild!" There are still many people who think that if it didn't happen to white people (if it was something white people did to people of color), it's not important.
