In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson Analysis

Ever wondered what it's like to live in China? Just ask Shirley. When In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson starts off, Shirley is living in China with her family. She resides in one giant ho...

Shirley doesn't tell the story in her own words, but instead an unknown presence does it for her. This third-person perspective allows us to view the events in Shirley's life from a bit of distance...

Shirley Temple Wong might not have been real (sad face), but the circumstances surrounding her life and the environment in which she lives definitely were. And this means we're in historical fictio...

Shirley's conscious of all of the exciting new things America has to offer. She's always marveling at things, ranging from the big—like the Brooklyn Bridge (how do those ropes hold the bridge up,...

When we say that this book is written with a childlike and simple style, we're not blowing it off. Not by a long shot. Instead, we mean that most of the book consists primarily of Shirley's thought...

In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson refers to the transformational events that take place for Shirley over the course of the twelve months of her life that the book covers. It represents th...

Shirley starts out the book as a Chinese girl who is excited to go to America, though she doesn't know anything about the country. She struggles to acclimate, but by the end of the story, she's pre...

Despite its really long title, In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson isn't a really hard book to understand. Shirley's journey is pretty straightforward—literally, from China to America—a...

Movin' on Up Sixth Cousin, a.k.a. Bandit, lives with her entire extended family in China. But not for long. She finds out that she's going to schlep across the world to move to America with her mom...

Bette Bao Lord is the wife of the ex-ambassador to China. That's a pretty neat connection to have. (Source.) Lord is originally from Shanghai and came to America, just like Shirley journeyed to the...

This is a kids' book through and through, and that means that when it comes to steaminess there's nada, zip, zilch.

Confucianism (1.4; 10.11)Happy Buddha (3.3)Kwan Yin (3.31; 5.43; 5.86; 8.46; 9.122; 12.66)Cinderella (8.14)Herald Tribune (8.23)Nancy Drew (9.41)Zane Grey (9.41)Grey's Anatomy (9.74)The Sporting Ne...