In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson

    Boo here! So, newest book has a very long title. Here we go, In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. Whew! Let's call it Year of the Boar for short. Loads easier to type. :) OK, not as long as I originally thought.

    Anyway, this book is about a young Chinese girl, Shirley Temple Wong, who moves to New York with her parents. Naturally the adjustment is hard. It would be as if you or I were stuck in the middle of China. She knows little English and is the only Chinese person at her school. At first all the children are quite welcoming, but they soon give up on her. In addition to all this her mother makes her take piano lessons!

    Shirley is convinced that it can't get any worse when she runs into an older girl named Mabel and they get into a fight, leaving Shirley with two black eyes. After refusing to tell her parents, she discovered Mabel had been watching her, and they struck up a friendship. So good a friendship that Mabel invites Shirley to play "stickball," otherwise known as baseball. All the children then started to call her Jackie Robinson. after that Shirley becomes the Dodgers #1 fan, following them on the radio every time their on.

    She also gets her piano teacher to let her parents take care of the building while she goes to Spain to visit her daughter.  Then she gets a job babysitting three toddlers in the building; which, if you're a babysitter yourself, you know that's harder then it first seems. She uses the money to buy them candy to "tame" them.
 
    School starts up again, and brings with it a new classmate and friend for Shirley, a girl named Emily. They become instant best friends, sharing secrets, playing at each other's houses, and basically doing everything together. So, when it's time to elect the student body president, who do you think Shirley nominates? Emily, naturally. When Emily wins, yea, their teacher announces that Jackie Robinson will be coming to their school and the student body president will give him the key to it. Emily refuses, as she does not like baseball, and instead asks Shirley to do it.
 
When the night is there, Shirley gets the news that her mother is "with expectant happiness," otherwise said as pregnant. Shirley presents the key to her hero and then sees her family from China is here and saw her! What a grand Christmas present.

    I give this book a 40 out of 100. The reason: while this book is good, well written and deals with many of the complications of being an immigrant, I am just used to action stories. But it was still a good book, don't get me wrong, it's just an opinion.