book talk tuesday

THE YEAR OF THE BOAR AND JACKIE ROBINSON by Bette Bao Lord

IndieBound Description:
Shirley Temple Wong sails from China to America with a heart full of dreams.Her new home is Brooklyn, New York. America is indeed a land full of wonders, but Shirley doesn't know any English, so it's hard to make friends. Then a miracle-baseball-happens. It is 1947, and Jackie Robinson, star of the Brooklyn Dodgers, is everyone's hero. Jackie Robinson is proving that a black man, the grandson of a slave, can make a difference in America and for Shirley as well, on the ball field and off, America becomes the land of opportunity.

My Thoughts:Oh, how I admire this book! I didn't read this until I was adult, actually not until after I wrote The Year of the Dog. It's just an incredible book that so captures the time period and the Asian-immigrant experience in a fun and realistic way. I think one of the reasons why I skipped over the year of the boar and went straight to the The Year of the Rat was to try to avoid comparisons to this amazing book.