From School Library Journal
Grade 3-7-Through conversations with two 12-year-old residents, Chao Liu and Sze Ki Chau, Krull presents an overview of life in New York City's Chinatown, making brief observations about crowded streets, vegetable stands, tourists, immigrants, crime, gangs, holidays, food, stereotypes, and traditions. Unfortunately, there is not enough solid information here for report writers, and Chinese youngsters may find the text's many generalizations hurtful. A photograph of four teenagers playing handball on a graffiti-filled court does not necessarily mean "signs of gang activity..."; and it is unlikely that Chao's first language is English if his parents do not speak it. To describe the local cuisine as looking to an outsider like it comes "from another planet" is insulting; it is also not accurate to describe the New Year Festival as "more frightening than festive" to children. The author notes that many non-Catholic Chinese attend Catholic school, but neglects to point out that in New York many non-Catholics attend parochial schools. Some of the descriptions of Chinatown are also applicable to other ethnic communities in New York, and so the presentation of the Chinese experience as totally unique is misleading.
Susan Pine, New York Public LibraryCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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