American Born Chinese was awesome. Initially I was confused as there are 3 storylines that at first, really seem like they're not going to come together. Heck, they're in three different styles. One tells the straightforward story of our main character, a Chinese-American boy, Jin, in a new grade school, trying desperately to fit in and make friends. Then there's the story of the Monkey God. Finally, there's the story of Danny, an American boy, whose Chinese-caricature of a cousin comes to visit and humiliates him at every turn. In the end, they do in fact all come together and make sense and make the main story line (Jin) much richer, although one is a folktale and one is a farce/fantasy. I can see why this book has won so many awards and why it's so popular. I made a big impact on me and I want to read Yang's other books.

I think graphic novels are wonderful for school-age kids, partly because it's just wonderful to have the combination of words AND picture to enrich the storytelling. But also because some people are just naturally much more visual than textual, and so these books not only don't leave them out, but for once they might even have an edge. They're an especially effective format for books about different races/cultures because when you're just reading words on a page, it's possible to forget the main character is from another country or looks different from you. That's much harder to forget with constant visual clues. Both excellent books, highly recommend.

I checked both of these books out of the library.
Both of these books are published by Macmillan, my employer.
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