Project Mulberry

The teen novel entitled Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park is a great book. It showed a young girl coming of age and was having identity issues. This book focused on this character named Julia who is a Korean American but doesn't see herself as a Korean. Julia wants to be less Korean than her family and seems a little embarrassed of her family's history and culture. This book also focuses on another character named Patrick who is Julia best friend. I found their relationship to be very honest and pure. Patrick and Julia are faced with the challenge of participating in Wiggles Science Fair. They have decided to do a project on silkworms. However, Julia is not to trilled with the idea due to the fact this is something that Korean woman do as a way to produce silk for clothing. This book focus's on accepting who you are in life. And learning how to accept others who may not be like you. I found this book to be a good source of reading for coming of age children. But the one flaw in the book was that at the end of every chapter there was a conversation between the author and Julia. I found at the beginning of the book for these conversations to be pointless and take away from the story at hand. None the less as the novel continued I found myself understanding why the conversation are put in.