A Step from Heaven by Michael L Printz was about a family that moves from Korea to California in hopes of having a better life.  The book is told through the eyes of Young Ju, the daughter of Apa and Uhmma. The book follows Young Ju’s tough journey through life while she is trying to acclimate to American society while also holding on to some of her Korean culture and also facing the difficult standards of being a woman.

            The book begins when Young Ju first starts school in second grade and follows her life until she graduates high school.  Young Ju’s life quickly changes again when her mom has a baby boy, Joon.  Her father, Apa, holds all of his dreams and aspiration in Joon, saying he can be anything in the world: the president, a lawyer, or a doctor.  Young Ju feels jealous and doesn’t understand why she can’t be all those things, but her father remains focusing his attention on Joon and teaching him to “be a man.”  The theme of “being a man” is seen throughout the book, Apa does not want Joon to grow up to be weak or cry, at times he would even hit his son to get that message across.  The book continues in this fashion until a turn of events when Apa finds out his mother has passed away and he can’t return to Korea for the funeral due to lack of money.  After the death of his mother Apa’s behavior drastically changes, he begins drinking more, missing work, and being disrespectful to his wife and children.  Apa’s drinking get so out of control he eventually gets in trouble with the law and loses his license, he stops caring about things that he once did such as Young Ju having the highest grades in her class.  Eventually he starts hitting Young Ju and Uhmma so badly that Young Ju must call the police because she is afraid Apa will kill her mother if no one stops him.  At first Uhmma is very upset with Young Ju because she blames her for him being taken away but eventually thanks Young Ju and is happy Apa is gone.  In the final pages of the book Uhmma must make a decision whether to go back to Korea with Apa or stay in California, ultimately she chooses to stay in California and her, Young Ju, and Joon finally move into their own home.

            When I first started reading this book I was not very interested or engaged in it, but over time I became more invested.  I was interested and curious to see how Apa would treat his family in the face of devastation and if he would let that define him, which ultimately I think he did.  I think the author stuck to the status quo when dealing with power in this book.  This family, new to American, has little power or wealth and that continues throughout the entire book.  We see them struggle and working multiple jobs just to keep afloat.  Young Ju is even too embarrassed to tell her best friend where she lives.  We can also see power in the family dynamic and how Apa has control and power and demonstrates it by being physical.  Both parents also believe Joon is the future for their family because he is male which is giving him power.  Overall, I think this book sticks to what is assumed when a family moves to America when it comes to power and wealth.

            A specific part of the book that stood out to me was right after Piri’s mother died and he found out about his father having another woman.  Piri and his father got into it about a photograph that Piri had torn up but what sticks out the most to be is how the next day Piri purposely spoke poorly so “get back at his father”.  This is very similar to the beginning of the book when Piri tried to run away-this time the fight between him and his father was so bad that his father kicked him out.

            Overall I enjoyed the book and reading about Piri’s journey and his struggles.  I think Piri mainly struggled with finding his identify and who he was. The author mentioned that Piri’s skin was darker than his siblings and even though he was Puerto Rican he was often indented as African American.  This also relates to his on again off again relationship with his father.

I got to the middle of the book where Christopher finds the letters from his mom and the chapter where he gets sick in his father’s bed and can’t move or speak is heartbreaking.  Christopher’s whole world is a lie, his mother is still alive and is trying to reach him.  This chapter becomes even worse for Christopher when his dad tells him he is in fact the one who killed Wellington.  

When reading this book I wondered why Christopher’s dad didn’t tell him about his mom’s affair.  Christopher had a good understanding of divorce and what it meant to have an affair.  He said a couple of times in the book it meant “doing the sex with someone else”.  So I question why Christopher’s father felt he couldn’t handle it.  Of course, for any child to hear that your mother cheated and left is heartbreaking but wouldn’t it have been better than lying.  

When reader other parts of the book I questioned if other characters were aware of Christopher’s differences.  When he interacted with both police officers, I could not tell if the police officer knew why Christopher was reacting the way he was (yelling or hitting) or thought Christopher was just being defiant.  I think as a society we need to be more educated in recognizing the difference.

I read the article, “Rethinking Schools”, and immediately thought about my own education.  The article says, “Although an estimated 20 percent of people in the U.S. have one or more type of disability, there are disproportionately few children's picture books about people with, or addressing the issue of disability.”  I think this is completely accurate - I never even thought about this fact until reading this.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is probably the first book (besides Of Mice and Men) that I read that addresses the issue of disabilities.  I think school districts need to start incorporating more books/short stories/articles that help address this issue.  There is a huge percentage of students that have one or more type of disability, especially in NYC public schools and if teachers could address this issue maybe our students wouldn’t feel so ashamed and embarrassed about them.  It would also be nice to have some type of parent out-reach with this topic because parents also have negative feelings towards their child being labeled as learning disabled and will withdraw all services which only hurts the student.