Reviews and Comments

This book is really cute! And it's super enjoyable on its own. I'd definitely say give it a go, but do go into it knowing that the audience is primarily aimed at younger teenagers.

Anyway, I've been reading this book with my student, and they are someone whose English fluency is very much in the middle. They have a lot of typical school-based knowledge, but they haven't really had to use English that much outside of class (and even the class is very much lacking in actually using English other than the assignments). Those complaints are slightly irrelevant, but it does contextualise what I'm going to say here since my review is mostly with regards to that element.

This book is really good for kids who are newer to reading in English, and it is one that I'd recommend to people who want to encourage kids to start reading in English (especially if the goal is for fluency). The images really back up the text to make it easier for people to guess the meanings of words. For those that aren't, the rest of the text often does a good job here, too. It's also a very easy book to read in a group setting (one-on-one with a more fluent person or as a group of learners), as there are a lot of elements to engage with.

I put this here because there is a dearth of information about age appropriate books for teens who are newer to learning English, especially as everything constantly recommends giving them books that are geared for a much younger audience (which often bores them to tears).

I really love what this book is trying to do, and I really enjoyed so much of the story up to the very end of it because... it was just meh?

Not sure what the editing process was for this book or what conversations took place during it, but it feels very much like Alma was going to play a much stronger role than she did. There was so much choreography in the beginning about Alma being the colonialist monster, trying to revitalise and support colonialism within Vietnam, and trying to exploit Vietnamese people, and trying to rewrite that colonial history to support European histories...

... and then that ball was just kind of dropped for the focus on the house being parasitic. Sometimes the 'Alma' ball was picked back up, but I don't think it was used very well. And I have to wonder if parts of that were to make white and/or European audiences more comfortable. Or if it was an unintentional pulling back from what was being said, even if there were a lot of strong lines left in.

My student's pretty quick at reading this. For her English level (she's more in the "intermediate" level with regards to school-based fluency tests but still struggles with using the language as she would normally use it), this is really good.

There've been a lot of new words for her (words like ravine, creek, cavern), but the images also really help her to get an understanding of what they mean.

It's also age-appropriate for a 12-year old, especially one who likes magic-based fantasy. This has been one of the biggest difficulties that I've had in finding books for students, honestly. Most suggestions for 'new readers in English' are for really young kids, and a lot of younger teenagers just don't want to read stories intended for kids between the ages of 6-8 (and, if we're honest, a lot of books 'made for' young children are also things young children tend to side-eye quite a lot).

This book is really well-written, and the structure employed in it really has the feel of both talking to a grandparent (whether or not they're actually your own) and/or the local town gossip. I love this about this book because it makes it just so easy to read through.

I also love that one of the core elements of the story (one that, if people know about Fried Green Tomatoes, is the most well-known) is just kind of... tossed out there a couple times and in ways that make a person go "Wait, did she just say what I think she said?"

But I do find it incredibly difficult to recommend. Part of it is because I know people can find its use of racist and ableist slurs frustrating and bothersome (which I also can completely understand). While it's understandable that sometimes the perspectives match with the characterisation, there are some moments where it feels a bit off.

Also, there's a lot of Mary Kay propaganda in parts of it, which is very weird considering it's an MLM. And I say that it's propaganda because Evelyn manages to get the Pink Cadillac and other high-level rewards... which is very unlikely. Ninny telling her she'd be good at it is cute in a very naive kind of way, but Evelyn actually succeeding in an MLM is fucking wild. (And Mary Kay reps have used the connection between Fannie Flagg and Mary Kay Ash to post the story about how the former was friends with the latter and gave a speech to an Emerald Seminar in 1992.)

Something else that I'm also genuinely annoyed by is that Evelyn's goal is to... lose weight? And rather than focus on her struggle to appreciate herself despite her body and society's attempt to force her to hate it (something that I think is taught via Ninny), she takes the lessons of her friend and heads to... a fat farm in California? Which is pretty frustrating, even if not a major plot point.

This book is largely unforgiving, starting immediately with the brutality that the people of Gwangju endured throughout the uprising. So much of this book is incredibly visceral.

Probably the strength of this book is that it is structured as a set of short stories, providing multiple perspectives. The first story starts with the protagonist of Dong-ho and his perspective of what was happening, while the rest of the stories all engage with the perspectives of others while continuing to follow him (to varying degrees).

There is one moment that frustrates me and that I feel undercuts the book, which is to simply say that there were military personnel that were "also nonaggressive" even as many were cruel. But it leaves me with an unanswered and unaddressed question: If they saw that what they were doing was wrong, why were they there? What were they doing to fight back and stop it, rather than to cushion it? It's one thing for civilians to do what they can to survive, but it's an entire other for military personnel to... do little acts of kindness (that can also easily be reinterpreted through other lenses that focus on protecting themselves and their institution).

I genuinely feel that this one bit really undercuts a lot of what came before it, especially because there is a persistent back-and-forth kind of dialogue going on that discusses degrees of nationalism. This was something that I didn't mind being left unanswered and incomplete, as it allows the reader to figure out their own position... but the inclusion of this small bit about the military makes it feel like a minor capitulation to acceptable social positions.