Customer Reviews

A Step From Heaven

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book comes highly recommended. It received the Printz award for young adult literature, and is called a must-read by my writing instructor. On reading it, I can see why. On the surface, the book is about a child-immigrant's experience adapting to life in the United States. It is written more in the style of an adult novel than a YA novel. An Na rightly expects her readers to be able to handle more than a lot of books expect them too.

The voice An Na uses to tell her story is fascinating. It begins with Young Ju as a four-year old who speaks no English. Instead of using normal names for things like "toilet paper", she describes them with amazing childlike and unusual words. When she is in America, English dialogue is written how she hears it, not how it is spelled. Wonderful way to show how confusing a new language is. This book is full of touch and smell, as well as sight. She uses vivid descriptions --For just one example, the touch of her mother's rough hands feel like the lick of a cat's tongue.

The book covers Young Ju's life from Age 4 to college age, and the voice matures with her, from the child who still believes magical things, like planes fly to heaven, to a woman who is becoming independent and American despite her's fathers wish to keep her Korean-thinking and subservient.

This book is truly rich with experience. Nothing is flat. She uses many contrasts. We see her father reading the Korean newspaper avidly and then being stumped completely by a few immigration forms. And it goes on with wonderful details like that.

And as for her father, his portrayal is superb. He is a mean-spirited violent alcoholic. Yet he is their father, and at times there are very good times. At times, he worked for the family very hard. We know how he is struggling with a new culture. While there are no excuses for his behavior, we know he was not always like that. I have rarely seen a characterization that shows the destruction of a life as richly, unsentimentally and unsensationally as this.

And of course, the other treat of this book is seeing Young Ju change from a girl who watches things happen to a girl who makes things happen. A book well worth your time.

When I heard author An Na speak at a school librarian's convention in Portland, Oregon, in October, 2002, I knew I had to read this book. What she said struck a chord with me, an immigrant who came to this country when I was 3 years old from Holland in 1953. I am also very close to a young man who was adopted from Korea when he was 2 years old.

While this powerful story is about a Korean girl adapting to her new life in America, many of the struggles she faces are similar to those that I went through, even though I was a white kid from an earlier generation.

I plan to share this emotionally gripping story with my adopted Korean friend, as I believe he will find some things to relate to as well.

Don't be put off by the awkward, slow start. That's part of the story's development. Highly recommended.

This virtually flawless book traces the steps of Yung Ju, a Korean girl who moves to America (or as she clalls it, "Mi Gook" )as a young child. She thinks she is going to heaven because of all the great things she's heard about it. She soon learns that it is not. Her family struggles to find a place to live, and to learn English. Yung Ju tries her best to do good in school. She makes friends with a girl, only to be forbidden from seeing her. It unfolds into haunting grace as Yung Ju grows and matures into a young woman and her father becomes more and more abusive and becoming an ever closer to becoming an alcoholic and her brother becomes a rebel and ditches school. Strangely graceful yet real and painful, A Step From Heaven dances with pain across the stage with exquisite voice.

A Step From Heaven, by An Na, is a great book and an affecting novel. In the book, the main character, Young Ju, moves from Korea to America. She must face all obstacles to obtain a normal, American life. Her father is a very harsh father who makes sexist comments, and strikes her mother, her brother, and her. She learns to be a good student and very good at speaking and communicating in English. Her father only gets worse as she gets older. And only on good days he is a little nice. He was rubbing on her little brother Joon, when she realized her dad was no good for anybody. Young Ju was forbidden to see her best friend Amanda because her father thought she was bad news and way to American, so she snuck out of her house and said she was going out to study but her father saw her. When she got home he started cursing at her and hitting her, when her mother defended her, her father started pounding on her mother. It got really bad and she finally realized her had to call the police or her father was going to kill her mother. Fortunately, she had things better in the end and starts a new life. I strongly recommend this novel.
I recommend this novel because it gives you a large aspect of culture shock. The book gives you a new taste of a new life style. In the book, the main character, Young Ju and her family have a large case of culture shock as well. Like when she first tastes coke, and thinks its like tacks rushing down your throat. Or like when her parents fist heard English, they couldn't believe their ears! They thought everyone was talking crazy or that they were upset. Another reason I recommend this book is that it is not only and interesting true story, but it teaches you a lot. It teaches you what is precious and sweet in your life. Like when Young Ju sees the sweet side of her father, when his mother dies and he fells sorrow and she helps her father cope. That teaches you that even the cruelest people have a sweet sides. This book reaches you on a very deep level.
Even though this is a novel, that in my opinion is good, I wouldn't recommend this book to someone under 9. There is a large amount of cursing, And abuse. Something that might put someone off in this book, is that it talks about things that are very serious in our culture, such as abuse, like that is part of their everyday life. It's sort of confusing, because its so off our base that its hard to fallow. The chapters sometimes leave you hanging and go the next chapter. Those are a few reasons why I wouldn't recommend this book. Although this reason personally didn't affect me. I strongly recommend this book.

The first chapter literally took my breath away. I could almost *feel* the words in their original Korean, and when Young Ju later finds the photograph of that day, I returned to read it again with new tears filling my eyes. The child's voice is exquisite--neither saccharine nor too-cute. The interplay between Young Ju, her younger brother, and their abusive father is both heartrending and "true."

I would give the book 5 stars for the first few chapters and 3 stars for the end chapters. I didn't like the long time span which, in my opinion, weakened the tight narrative control which is so breathtaking in the beginning.

Okay, so maybe in reading and rating this book I'm a little biased because I am Korean-American girl, but I thought that it was a good book. The ideas that An Na writes about are so true to Korean culture; the pressure to be perfect; the importance of family; respect; the value of men over women; and dealing with two cultures. The phoenetic spelling of Korean words to English was awkward and I doubt if anyone without knowledge of the Korean language would be able to understand any of it i.e. 'harabugi'(meaning grandfather) 'uhmma'(mom) 'apa' (dad) 'halmoni' (grandmother) 'uhn-nee' (this is a term a girl uses to call another girl who is older than her) 'gomo' (your dad's sister, yes, I realize I could have typed 'aunt', but in Korean there are different words for relatives depending on how they are related to you). I even had trouble trying to understand what the spelling was meant to mean in Korean, but I still think that anyone should read it. The book gives a little insight to the life of a Korean girl growing up in an American society.

Wonderful story and very real, while reading this I thought it to be a good lesson book also. A lesson in general to anyone who has never traveled outside their home country. Our cultural differences from Korea are huge, and heaven is what you make it. I was in Korea for 3 years, I found much natural paradise there. But as for this story, it's a beautiful read, go for it, it will teach you something about the USA that you...Already know but didn't give it much thought. A super book that brings our cultural differences together in a nice story like this is SB 1 or God by Maddox

Four year old Young Ju believes America must be heaven even though there are many adjustments to be made from life in Korea; but as she and her family face problems in the new world, they find both family life and traditions challenged. A moving first-person story of a young girl's struggles with change and a new culture.

This book is a series of carefully crafted moments in the life of a Korean immigrant girl named Young Ju. From the first moment, in which we can assume Young Ju is a baby, to the last, when she is a young woman, we believe her voice and care about her story. The writing is poetic and very real- the images Young Ju uses to describe her world not only make the reader see what she sees, but bring us to feel empathy for her and to want so badly for everything to turn out for her in the end. A poignant and gentle look at a not-so gentle world, this book stayed with me long after I had closed it.

Young Ju was born in Korea and lived the first four years of her life there. Then she and her parents move to America to start a new life. Young does not speak any English, and she has trouble understanding this new world around her. When her younger brother, Joon, is born, Young feels like she is second best. Sons are treasured. Her fahter changes the baby's diaper and talks of how great he will be when he grows up. This baby gets attention and special priveleges, and Young feels like she is ignored and unloved.

As she grows up and becomes more Americanized, Young begins to realize that her father is abusive. Their lives in the United States are a struggle, rather than the dream they had expected them to be. Young is trying to fit in with her peers in this country, while her parents expect her to follow the stricter rules of a Korean society. She is torn between two countries, and is afraid of her father. Can their lives really work out for the better here in the United States?

I found the mother in this story frustratingly weak. I understand that different cultures have different roles and expectations for women, but I was still horrified at the idea that a woman would allow her husband to abuse her and her children. I liked that this story made clear to me some of the reasons why people would come to this country from other countries. I liked reading about first impressions of the United States. The narrator tells interesting stories of her first day of school and the misunderstandings she had because she didn't speak the language.