unicornlover69's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
Nope.
heathersbike's review against another edition
I read this after seeing the play at Seattle Children's Theatre. Parts of it were very different - liberties to make the play smoother and with a smaller cast, I'm sure. Both were amazing and heartbreaking. It's hard to believe that we are doing something similar today when everyone is so horrified by this piece of our history. So much for learning from it. 60 years from now they are going to look back on this "family separation" and wonder why we didn't do more.
alexblackreads's review against another edition
4.0
I really love the books in the My Name is America/Dear America series. They taught me so much history as a kid, and this one in particular was a favorite of mine when I was young. This has to be the fourth or fifth time I've read it, and even as an adult it holds up so well. Ben's voice is sarcastic and funny throughout, no matter how bleak the situation.
My only real issue was that the story ended kind of abruptly. There was no conclusion, open ended or not. It just stopped randomly and then we got an epilogue. I don't expect books like this to be neatly wrapped up, but usually there's some kind of climax.
Overall, I'd still highly recommend. I adored this as a kid and still do as an adult. I'd highly recommend to both adults and kids. It teaches so much history. Not just this book, but the Dear America books in general. I genuinely learned so much history that I otherwise wouldn't have known, and I definitely encourage people to pass them off to their kids.
My only real issue was that the story ended kind of abruptly. There was no conclusion, open ended or not. It just stopped randomly and then we got an epilogue. I don't expect books like this to be neatly wrapped up, but usually there's some kind of climax.
Overall, I'd still highly recommend. I adored this as a kid and still do as an adult. I'd highly recommend to both adults and kids. It teaches so much history. Not just this book, but the Dear America books in general. I genuinely learned so much history that I otherwise wouldn't have known, and I definitely encourage people to pass them off to their kids.
beammey's review against another edition
4.0
I thought I would like this book a lot more than I did. It's not that it's a bad book -- it's a very good book and I learned quite a bit, I just think I was expecting too much of it. That seems to be might pitfall with a lot of books. That said, it was still good and I still enjoyed and for a young boy in the correct age group I can see them loving the book. Over all good and would recommend it. 4 out of 5 stars.
engpunk77's review against another edition
3.0
A fictional journal of a boy before and during his internment during WWII that I definitely recommend using this with middle school students as a supplement to their social studies unit on WWII. The sentence structure and vocabulary are just right for my student population, and the narrator is REALISTIC--he sounds like my kids.
Conflicts include the father being taken away to be interrogated for over a year, the rest of the family being sent to god knows where, life in the internment camp, getting father back a zombie, having a friend get involved in baseball gambling and then throwing a game, having a roommate who has been separated from his wife in Japan who worries throughout the book only to finally find relief when he receives letter indicating that she and his daughter are safe at his brother's house in Hiroshima.....
They boy reports about the problems and the benefits in a seemingly honest way, and I did get a better sense of life in the camp than when I read a nonfiction book about Japanese Internment in my middle school library.
My issue with the text is this: The author writes in near-perfect, grammatically sound sentences that still captures this middle-school voice. For example, he'd say that this know-it-all kid is "half Japanese, half Jerk" and when he's talking, Ben "tried not to puke." So, I could see the narrator being a normal kid. I know that my students can't write with perfect punctuation, and I'm so THANKFUL that the author chose to write with the standards of proper English anyway, at no expense, even though it's a "journal." The problem is, just like in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, the author uses improper grammar as far as pronoun usage goes, which angers me! Why? Why? Why? (Example: "Me and Naomi went to the mess hall") This kind of error is so pervasive in this country that soon the correct syntax "Naomi and I went to the mess hall") will sound completely foreign. I want my students to read more SO THAT they will be exposed to proper grammar, usage, mechanics, and spelling. Since the author chose not to use real-life lack of punctuation and a bunch of spelling errors, my only guess is that these authors (Denenberg & Jeff Kinney) really don't know better. I assume that they themselves don't know how to use the correct pronoun in a sentence with a compound subject or direct object.
I have noticed that the word "till" as a shortened version of "until" is now commonly used and accepted. It's in my son's basal readers AND in countless books that I've read in the last month. Will it be acceptable, pretty soon, to start saying "Me and him are best friends" ? While I will perpetually cringe, I suppose it will make my job easier (I don't really mean that).
I implore the editors of this book series (Dear America) to publish no more books without correcting these errors!
Overall, a good text to peddle to your students for educational purposes (at the expense of your grammar lessons). It even includes some nonfiction historical background at the end of the book for which I am enthusiastically envisioning the possibilities.
Conflicts include the father being taken away to be interrogated for over a year, the rest of the family being sent to god knows where, life in the internment camp, getting father back a zombie, having a friend get involved in baseball gambling and then throwing a game, having a roommate who has been separated from his wife in Japan who worries throughout the book only to finally find relief when he receives letter indicating that she and his daughter are safe at his brother's house in Hiroshima.....
They boy reports about the problems and the benefits in a seemingly honest way, and I did get a better sense of life in the camp than when I read a nonfiction book about Japanese Internment in my middle school library.
My issue with the text is this: The author writes in near-perfect, grammatically sound sentences that still captures this middle-school voice. For example, he'd say that this know-it-all kid is "half Japanese, half Jerk" and when he's talking, Ben "tried not to puke." So, I could see the narrator being a normal kid. I know that my students can't write with perfect punctuation, and I'm so THANKFUL that the author chose to write with the standards of proper English anyway, at no expense, even though it's a "journal." The problem is, just like in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, the author uses improper grammar as far as pronoun usage goes, which angers me! Why? Why? Why? (Example: "Me and Naomi went to the mess hall") This kind of error is so pervasive in this country that soon the correct syntax "Naomi and I went to the mess hall") will sound completely foreign. I want my students to read more SO THAT they will be exposed to proper grammar, usage, mechanics, and spelling. Since the author chose not to use real-life lack of punctuation and a bunch of spelling errors, my only guess is that these authors (Denenberg & Jeff Kinney) really don't know better. I assume that they themselves don't know how to use the correct pronoun in a sentence with a compound subject or direct object.
I have noticed that the word "till" as a shortened version of "until" is now commonly used and accepted. It's in my son's basal readers AND in countless books that I've read in the last month. Will it be acceptable, pretty soon, to start saying "Me and him are best friends" ? While I will perpetually cringe, I suppose it will make my job easier (I don't really mean that).
I implore the editors of this book series (Dear America) to publish no more books without correcting these errors!
Overall, a good text to peddle to your students for educational purposes (at the expense of your grammar lessons). It even includes some nonfiction historical background at the end of the book for which I am enthusiastically envisioning the possibilities.
yonnyan's review
1.0
This book was written by a white male and is a fictional account of what a Japanese child, Ben Uchida, went through during World War II after being forced to relocate to a Japanese Internment Camp.
While some of details regarding the internment camp experience are realistic, the book overall is very uncomfortable--not because of the subject matter, but because of how it's written--and felt somewhat problematic.
The language and descriptions used are unnatural and illustrate that someone who has little knowledge about the subject matter wrote this book. I also felt that the emotions being portrayed in the book were feelings that people expect or romanticise internment camp victims to have undergone. The emotional, psychological, and haunting experiences that children living in internment camps underwent are horrific, to say the least. The book cushions the actuality of this atrocity to make it more accessible for children.
While this is supposed to be the journal of a kid, its prose is more akin to someone who is much older, making it unrealistic in terms of proper perspective. My entire time reading it, I felt I was reading about the experiences of an adolescent who's sixteen years of age or older. It created an incongruity between what I was reading and what I was expecting from the narrative given the synopsis and other information regarding it.
The back of the book contains historical notes and references to the sources that the author used in research for writing the book, which had me stupefied. This book was horridly disappointing to read, to be blunt. I feel that if the research involved was taken and utilised to write a non-fiction account of this period of World War II, it would have been much, much better as the author's historical information was not nearly as terrible as the fictionalised tale itself; in fact, that was the most interesting aspect of the entire thing.
This happened. It is a very real part of history where an entire race of people were prejudiced against and dehumanised as individuals for being Japanese during a time of war. It was an obscene act of hatred. It shouldn't be softened or written in a romanticised manner, which is how The Journal of Ben Uchida came off. This event was a godawful fucked-up, racist thing that was damaging beyond anyone's comprehension, aside from those who suffered through it.
Teach children the reality of what happens in wars. Don't cushion them or protect them from its ugliness. Children are far stronger and capable of handling difficult subject matter than they are given credit for. The best way to educate against and fight racism and hatred, the best way to advocate for peace so shit like this doesn't happen again, is by being honest about it. Not by making it less than it is, like this book does, unfortunately.
1 outta 5.
While some of details regarding the internment camp experience are realistic, the book overall is very uncomfortable--not because of the subject matter, but because of how it's written--and felt somewhat problematic.
The language and descriptions used are unnatural and illustrate that someone who has little knowledge about the subject matter wrote this book. I also felt that the emotions being portrayed in the book were feelings that people expect or romanticise internment camp victims to have undergone. The emotional, psychological, and haunting experiences that children living in internment camps underwent are horrific, to say the least. The book cushions the actuality of this atrocity to make it more accessible for children.
While this is supposed to be the journal of a kid, its prose is more akin to someone who is much older, making it unrealistic in terms of proper perspective. My entire time reading it, I felt I was reading about the experiences of an adolescent who's sixteen years of age or older. It created an incongruity between what I was reading and what I was expecting from the narrative given the synopsis and other information regarding it.
The back of the book contains historical notes and references to the sources that the author used in research for writing the book, which had me stupefied. This book was horridly disappointing to read, to be blunt. I feel that if the research involved was taken and utilised to write a non-fiction account of this period of World War II, it would have been much, much better as the author's historical information was not nearly as terrible as the fictionalised tale itself; in fact, that was the most interesting aspect of the entire thing.
This happened. It is a very real part of history where an entire race of people were prejudiced against and dehumanised as individuals for being Japanese during a time of war. It was an obscene act of hatred. It shouldn't be softened or written in a romanticised manner, which is how The Journal of Ben Uchida came off. This event was a godawful fucked-up, racist thing that was damaging beyond anyone's comprehension, aside from those who suffered through it.
Teach children the reality of what happens in wars. Don't cushion them or protect them from its ugliness. Children are far stronger and capable of handling difficult subject matter than they are given credit for. The best way to educate against and fight racism and hatred, the best way to advocate for peace so shit like this doesn't happen again, is by being honest about it. Not by making it less than it is, like this book does, unfortunately.
1 outta 5.
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