Which makes sense if you know American history. The author obviously is more familiar with Japanese culture than Chinese culture. The deficiencies in the book specifically is that it is based in China, but the children's names are Japanese and almost everything in the book visually is Japanese. THEY ARE FROM ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. Each and every ethnicity is VERY different. It is disresepectful to categorize all Asians as the same. The point is the author did not care enough to be accurate-to differentiate between the Asians ethnicities that are too often categorized into one group. Of course the premise of the story is absurd-but that is not the point. Of course the story is not racist-but that is not the point. at the top of his voice at the grocery store. Is it terrible that I read the last page as, "And that is why all wells in China are fenced off, so that children can't accidentally fall in them" rather than "and that is why all children in China have short names"? I probably should just put this book away before I find my son singing "tikki tikki tembo, no sa rembo." etc. The whole name, which was so much fun to say as a kid, now feels kind of racist, like hearing someone pretend to speak Chinese by saying, "ching chong chang." But the thing I really can't get over is how bad the problem solving is in the book - it kind of implies the whole culture is unable to do basic root cause analysis. It just feels weird! I'm not crazy about the fact that the mom in the book is really nice to her elder son and mean to (or at least disinterested in) her younger son, but that didn't bother me as a kid (probably because I'm the older sibling). It's completely harmless, but one just doesn't say things like "and that's why the Chinese give their sons short names today" anymore. I couldn't wait to get it and read it with my little guy - and boy oh boy was I surprised to find that it feels kind of racist in today's day and age. I loved this book so very much as a child.
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