April Bookshare Information

This is due on May 5, 2009.

For this month's bookshare, the theme, format, and presentation style are all up to you. Please keep the following in mind: you should tell us about plot, characters, setting, and/or the author's style, you should read from the book to illustrate your points, you have three to five minutes, and you should create a score sheet so that I can evaluate you.

Your book must tie in with East Asia in some manner. I have included a Japan reading list on the back of this sheet, though you may pick any book which is connected with China, Japan, Taiwan, or Korea.

The score sheet should allow me to evaluate you on your analysis of the literature ( plot, characters, setting, and/or the author's style), and on your public speaking skills. Eye contact, confidence, preparation beforehand, and involving the learner are all important elements when delivering a speech. Your speech does not have to be in a five paragraph essay format, though I feel it is the best way to organize most everything in life. (I’m a fanatic, and I realize this.)

The other side of this sheet shows a variety of methods for demonstrating knowledge while creating a project. This should serve to give you some ideas, though you are not limited by the content of the list. You may not give a “standard” bookshare. Please be creative.

Desert Exile, Yoshiko Uchida, University of Washington Press, 1982, Japanese-American, female, autobiography
Internment Literature. Follows the war internment of a Japanese-American family. True story, quick read.
Suitable for middle school/junior high and high school. Grade:B+

Itsuka, Joy Kogawa, Anchor Books, 1992, Asian-American(actually Canadian), female, fiction
Internment Literature. Follows the life of a Japanese-Canadian woman and the group she belongs to who are fighting for compensation from the Canadian government for internment of Canadian citzens of Japanese decent during WWII.
Suitable for high school. Grade:B

Honor and Duty, Gus Lee, Ivy Books, 1994, Chinese-American, male, fiction
The follow-up to Lee's first book China Boy, follows Kai Ting through his ordeals at West Point as the only Chinese-American in the school. Only caution, the book is long.
Suitable for high-school. Grade:B+

Finding my voice Marie Lee, Houghton Mifflin, 1992, Asian-American, female, fiction.
Ellen Sung is the only Asian-American in a small school in Minnesota and is having trouble finding her identity. Should she follow her sister to Harvard, receive a letter in gymnastics, and/or forgive the racial comments she hears?.
Suitable forMiddle school/junior high. Grade: B (CL)

The Golem and the Dragon Girl Sonia Levitin, Dials, 1993, Asian-American/Jewish, female and male, fiction.
Laurel Wang and her Chinese-American family have moved out of a house that she thinks is haunted by the dragon spirit of her great-grandfather. Jonathan and his Jewish family move into the house and he thinks a golem is haunting the house. Laurel and Jonathan use their cultures to exorcise the ghost..
Suitable for Middle school/junior high. Grade:B (CL)

The Joy Luck Club.Amy Tan, Ballantine Books, 1989, Chinese American, Female, fiction.
A novel about four Chinese American women and their Chinese mothers coping with their different cultural aspects. It's told through the voices of each of the mothers and their daughters. The vignettes are compelling, beautifully creative, and real tear-jerkers. We would recomend this to anyone, especially women. ..
Suitable for high school. Grade: (VJC)

If It Hadn't been for Yoon Jun.Marie G. Lee, Houghton Mifflin/Avon, 1993, Korean American, Female, fiction.
A funny big that also deals with racism in a serious was. Twelve-year-old Alice is an adoptee from Korea in a white family. She doesn't think of herself as Korean at all, but when a boy from Korean, Yoon Jun, ends up in her class, she has to face up to real issues of who she is..
Suitable for middle school/junior high. Grade: A+ (ATC)