MMGM: When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller

"Long, long ago, when tiger walked like man..."

It's the summer before Lily begins seventh grade, and her widowed Korean American mother suddenly decides to move her and older sister Sam from their home in California to Sunbeam, Washington, to live with their Halmoni, who is very ill. Lily claims that her one superpower is the ability to make herself invisible, or what her sister calls a QAG - quiet Asian girl, unlike Sam who is always able to fit in and get along with people. But neither girl wants to move to Sunbeam.

Sure, Lily and Sam had always enjoyed visiting their Korean grandmother and hearing her stories. They especially like the way she would have them pretend to grab a star containing a story. Their favorite story was about a tiger and two sisters who became the sun and the moon to escape the tiger. So when Lily sees a large magical tiger sitting by the side of the road into Sunbeam, she knows she can tell her Halmoni about it.

But Halmoni's reaction when she hears about the tiger, isn't what Lily expects. She tells Lily that long ago she had stolen something from the tiger and stashed it away in some jars. Now, the tiger has come looking for what belongs to her. But what could Halmoni possibly have stolen from a magical tiger? The answer is in a story that Halmoni tells Lily one night about a lonely sky princess who whispers stories to the night. The stories become stars that light the world. But as a little girl, Halmoni didn't like some of the star stories that made her sad and thought they were dangerous. So she stole them and put them into jars. Now, the tiger wants them back.

So with the help of new friend Ricky, they build a tiger trap in the basement, using boxes that Halmoni had stacked by the basement door. One of the boxes contains jars and Lily is convinced that these are the star jars that Halmoni had used to hid the tiger's stories. Sure enough, that night the tiger is in the basement waiting for Lily. When she offers her a deal - return the stories and Halmoni would feel better - Lily is at first hesitant, but later, desperate to help her sick grandmother, she accepts it. With the release and telling of each story star, Lily begins to fill in the blank spots in Halmoni's past, sorting through and separating fact from fiction.

When You Trap a Tiger is just simply a wonderful, unputdownable story. The balance of realism and magical realism is so seamlessly done, nothing jars and even the tiger, appearing and disappearing like a Cheshire cat, becomes believable in the skilled hands of author Tae Keller. Story and characters are well-drawn and equally nuanced, playing their parts perfectly. The cast of characters is small and no character, not even Ricky, is gratuitous.

Keller addresses a number of themes in this book - loss, grief, family history, identity, and LGTBQ - but at heart is the theme of storytelling. As the tiger tells Lily, stories have the power to change someone, even if don't always end happily. The release of Halmoni's stories helps Lily discover not only who her grandmother is, but who she herself is and can be, and the lesson learned is that it is up to Lily to create her own story, making this a powerful coming-of-age tale.

At one point in the book, Halmoni tells Lily "everything a little bit magic." What a wonderful time to be a reader and be able to read magical stories like this.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was purchased for my personal library

Be sure to check out the other Marvelous Middle Grade Monday offerings, now being carried on by Greg at Always in the Middle. 

Spirit Hunters (Book 1) by Ellen Oh

It’s early summer and Harper Raine, 12, isn’t very happy about the family’s move to Washington, DC. Older sister Kelly thinks the move is all Harper’s fault because of starting a fire at school and then having a terrible accident at Briarly, a psychiatric hospital, that left her with both arms broken and two broken ribs. Harper, however, has absolutely no memory of either event

The new house is unbearably hot because of broken air conditioning, except for 4 year-old MIchael’s room, which is unnaturally cold. And Michael claims to have made a new friend in his room named Billy that no one else can see. Slowly, Harper begins to see her brother change from a sweet, loving little boy to a mean, violent child who only wants to stay in his room with Billy. 

When Harper mets Dayo, a Jamaican girl who lives a few blocks away, they become instant friends. Days knows some of the odd history of Harper’s new house, and tells her it has always been considered to be haunted.

As something evil and malicious takes over Michael more and more, Harper and Dayo research on the house’s history and discover some really frightening information. And it helps when Harper reconnects with her old friend Rose, a ghost who lives in a family mirror, and who can help figure things out. At the same time, Harper begins to remember more details about the fire and her accident at Briarly. And she is beginning to see glimpses of Billy, the boy possessing her brother. But what can two 12 year-old girls and a sweet ghost do in the face of such evil?

Luckily, Harper’s estranged grandmother lives nearby and shows up suddenly.  Grandma Lee is a Korean mudang or shaman, and her belief and work in the spiritual world is what has alienated Mrs. Raine from her mother. She immediately accesses the situation with the house and especially with Michael, who by now is almost totally possessed by Billy. And she informs Harper that she too is a mudang, and it is up to her to exorcise the house and her brother. But does Harper’s understand her newly uncovered ability as a spirit hunter enough to go up against such a strong malevolence.

Spirit Hunters is a fast read simply because you can’t put it down, the need to know what happens next is just too great. Even though the story covers only 10 days, Oh manages to build the tension slowly, beginning with a playful insinuation of creepiness and working up to almost full scale horror. Some of the tropes she used are a bit cliché, like oozing, bleeding walls, or floating ghosts, but these by no means diminish the delicious pleasure of the story for fans of scary tales.

Oh's writing is friendly and pretty straight forward, but I liked that in-between the third person narrative are Harper’s first person journal entries. These allow the reader to directly know and understand what she is feeling and thinking, and which also slowly reveal the blocked events surrounding the fire at school and the accident at the psychiatric hospital as they resurface in Harper's memory.

And I liked the way Oh introduced Harper’s Korean identity on her mother’s side of the family (her father is clearly not Korean). In Spirit Hunters, Harper begins to explore more fully this part of who she is and, I hope, it will expand subsequent books in this new series. 

Spirit Hunters takes place in Washington DC and you couldn’t ask for a better ghost story location (except maybe New Orleans). There’s just something about those old homes, the sidewalks inlaid with bricks, and the heat and dense humidity of summer that can be cut with a knife that all just lends itself to a well-done scary story.

If you want a good hair-raising scare this summer, do pick up a copy of Spirit Hunters and enjoy.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC received from Edelweiss Plus

Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park

Like most best friends, seventh-graders Julia Song and Patrick like to do everything together, from homework to collecting state quarters to joining the Work-Grow-Give-Live Club, affectionately known as the Wiggle Club. The club's purpose it to teach kids about farming, and every January, members are supposed to sign up to work on farm-related a project which will then be exhibited at the State Fair in August.

A project is right up Julia and Patrick's alley, but they can't come up with a good one until Mrs. Song suggests they raise silkworms.  Raising silkworms was something Julia's grandmother had done back in Korea and which her mother had helped with as a girl.  Patrick thinks this is a wonderful idea and with his customary enthusiasm, begins to immediately do research on silkworms.  Julia, however, is a lot less happy about this as their project.

Raising silkworms is a little too Korean for Julia. Wasn't it bad enough that her house always smelled so strongly of kimchi, a Korean specialty (it's spicy, pickled Napa cabbage and delicious), a smell that had always put other kids off?  Ironically, Kimchi is also something Julia hates, but Patrick absolutely loves.  And wasn't it bad enough to be the only Korean family in town, and then be to greeted with kids at the playground yelling "Chinka-chinka-Chinaman at her when they first saw her?  But silkworms for the Wiggle project?  No way, Julia just wants an all-American project.  And she is pretty sure she can sabotage the silkworm project enough to make Patrick give it up.

But when Mr. Maxwell, leader of the Wiggle club, hears the idea for raising silkworms, he is all for it.  The one big problem, the one that might just sink the project, is that silkworms only eat mulberry leaves and no one knows anyone with a mulberry tree.  Even hanging flyers around town hadn't produced any possibilities.  But then Miss Mona at the filling station said she had a customer who told her he had a mulberry tree, but he didn't write down Julia's phone number from the flyer.

Mr. Dixon didn't need to take the phone number - he had memorized it and, sure enough, he calls.  So Patrick, Julia and Mrs. Song drive over to his house to meet Mr. Dixon and talk about the project. But when he opens his front door, Julia experiences a serious uh-oh moment - Mr. Dixon is an elderly black man, and Mrs. Song doesn't like African Americans, though Julia doesn't know why.

Julia has a lot to contend with now - the silkworm project is all systems go, and she is finally beginning to get into it; she really enjoys going over to Mr. Dixon's with Patrick and getting the mulberry leaves and even visiting for a while.  But when they stay much too long one day, Mrs. Song forbids any visiting, and insists they just get the leaves and come straight home.  So not only must Julia also contend with her mother's apparent racist feelings towards African Americans, but she must also deal with her own feeling about her Korean heritage and her identity as a Korean American. And then there's Julia's growing affection for the silkworms as they mature that causes a terrible rift between her and Patrick.  Can it all possible work out?

I really enjoyed reading Project Mulberry and I thought Julia as an excellent protagonist, even when she found things to be "bo-o-o-ring," an adolescent attitude I was not unfamiliar, with thanks to my Kiddo.  Julia is a realistic seventh grader - sometimes selfish and self-absorbed, other times generous, kind, and thoughtful, and she has a lot to deal with in this coming of age novel.  Julia's identity issues are hard enough but dealing with the possibility that her mother might just be racist certainly adds to the difficulty. And yet, it also helps Julia look at her own attitudes about who she really is in a new light.

And then there is the moral dilemma Julia faces when she learns how silk is gotten from the silkworms.  A difficult decision must be made by Julia and Patrick, one that could destroy their whole project and even the best of friendships.

Along the way, the reader, along with Julia and Patrick, learns quite a bit about conservation and how a sustainable farm works, something I actually enjoyed reading about in the novel, especially since it was done so naturally and not like it was just tossed in as a plot device.  In fact, it inspires Julia and Patrick to try and make their silkworm project sustainable.

OK, I loved Project Mulberry, but themes of identity, friendship, racism, and conservation aside, there is one aspect of the novel that I really did not like.  In between chapters is a conversation between the author and Julia about the plot and where things are going in the novel.  Maybe it is there to show how a novel is constructed and written, as some people seem to think, but I found it just an annoyance.  After reading the first few, I started to just skip them so that I could read the novel with a sense of continuity without interruption.

Project Mulberry is a excellent, thoroughly satisfying novel that covers a lot of themes and, to its credit, doesn't necessarily spare the reader or Julia some harsh realities of life.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

MAY IS ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH