Customer Reviews

The clay marble

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2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The Clay Marble by Minfong Ho is a book on courage, friendship, and obstacles. 12 year-old Dara is the main character of the book, along with big brother Jantu, and best friend Sarun. Dara's family was forced to leave their town in Cambodia and moved to where the setting is, the border of Cambodia and Thailand. Walking the long miles to the Border, they were starved and thirsty. Arriving at The Border, Dara finds happiness again with another family, Sarun, Baby, Grampa Kem, and Nea. There is also something else Dara learns from The Border. She learns to build trust with other people, even when they are strangers.

Living at The Border was peaceful and Dara and Sarun were always together having fun. But one day, Dara was separated from her friends and family. There was bombing at The Border, and Dara was left lost in the middle of nowhere. To me, this is a metaphor of a part of everybody's life. When you feel like you're on top of the world it always happens you find yourself beneath it. Struggling, Dara travels long to re-unite with her beloved family.

It took her strength but at the end, she finds them safe and sound. But Sarun is not there, for Sarun was at a hospital with Baby, who was wounded. One thing that Sarun had left with Dara was clay marble, telling her that it was magic and would give her courage. With no choice, Dara and the family once again traveled miles to the hospital to meet Sarun. Many of us experience broken friendships, either from a fight, a move, or death. But for Dara, she had no idea what had happened to Sarun after she saw her board into the hospital bus. But Dara was determined that the clay marble would help her find her best friend, and it did.

Families are very important to a lot of us, but especially for Dara. Jantu, Dara's older brother had enlisted in the army every since the bombing. Dara didn't like it, but she knew by the way Jantu had changed, he liked it. Her mind was always on going home where they grew up, but she felt that Jantu had other plans. Sometimes I think when you fight with a sibling, you usually want them to do what you want but it was harder for Dara the time, loosing self-esteem and having to show bravery for her brother was tough for a 12-year-old girl.

We all experience death in our lives, and for Dara it was when Sarun was shot by one of Jantu's soldiers. Feelings mixed with anger and loss, Dara knew it was time for her to take a stand and convince Jantu to go home to the crops. At this time, Dara still had the clay marble safe with her but as they headed for home, she courageously threw it away. She did it because she knew she wasn't going to need it anymore, she had the magic inside herself.

I think the readers who would like this book will be the ones who are sensitive, emotional and low on self-esteem sometimes. My favorite parts in this book would be the parts where Dara dares to be brave. I think that because she had hard times a lot, and still found a way to be strong and optimistic. There are many books that are like this book, a girl who is confused most of the time and having to deal with so many things before they reach the age of 16 years old.

Lastly, even though I would say that Dara and I have nothing in common, I loved this book. I have never experienced such tragedy but I can say I have experienced losing a friend. It takes so much effort to regain power and self-esteem when you feel like the world is against you. The Clay Marble by Minfong Ho will teach all of you a magical lesson based on a true story in the past, and you will have to decide if you will let it do its magic on you.

I was very disapointed in this book. In school, we have reading groups, and the kids pick which book they want to read. My group was the group of kids who chose "The Clay Marble" by Mingfong Ho. Well, the back cover summary makes it sound interesting, we found out, and it suckered us into the book. None of us liked it. On the poster we made about "The Clay Marble", we explained that the characters were OK, but the plot was too fast-moving and there was too much just plain talking. Some parts were okay, but mostly we didn't like it. We wanted to like it, so we weren't complaining, but truth be told, it was boring. Sorry if I disapointed you, review reader, but the is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
-BookLover24/7

I thought that The Clay Marble was a pretty good book. The thing I liked the most was how descriptive the auther was. I could realy see what i was reading. Another thing I liked about this book was that the characters seemed real; they changed through out the whole book.

When I first read this book I kind of thought that it did not have any meaning to it, but I was wrong. I thought that because I knew nothing and learned nothing about the Khmer rouge. When I read this book I was astonished to read about other wars in southeast asia. Since I never heard of it I was really interested in this book. The character Dara was a really important character. I think it was important because she had to face alot of things. Such as losing her family for awhile, the grief of her best friend, and her older brother joining the army. This book is fiction but it tells the truth about most things. The war, the khmer rouge.It was a very exciting story to read. It told things based on the real facts. I'm an Asian-American myself, yet I've never heard any story like this before. I would highly recommend this book to people who wants to know more about things that happened in during the war.

The Clay Marble, by Minfong Ho, was an interesting book, but I don't think kids my age would say that. People my age would say a book like this would be dumb because they were forced to read it. But, I think it is a masterpiece, or better known as a classic. Events like the bombing at Nong Chan Camp are pure genius. Of course, these kinds of things were true about two decades ago. But the description of the bombing was so realistic that it felt like you were actually experiencing it. Some of the small, but good events are like Dara, the main character, getting over the "magic" marble and the death of her best friend, Jantu. These were small in the book, but would be big in a child's life, like myself or anyone else my age. Over all, I liked the whole book, despite the tragedies. I would recommend this book to teenagers and adults alike, because of the tragic events I have learned that occurs in this fantastic book.

The "Clay Marble" was a good book. It told us about what was happening in Cambodia and around the world. I disliked the beginning because Dara was not trusting herself confidence. I also did not like when Sarun wanted to be in the army. I liked when they got to the border, and Nea offered them rice and anything they needed until they got their own. I liked at the middle of the book when Chnay was nice to Dara, and helped her find her family. They also described the sick things really nasty in the book. The narrator discribed charaters as dynamic and static

The Clay Marble, by Minfong Ho is a story for the Cambodian refugees that escaped to the Thai-Cambodian border during the Vietnam War. The title refers to the life of the refugees that are escaping, which makes many families separate from their home and families but bound by a love and determination that even war could not destroy (Parent Magazine) In my opinion, this story is very enjoyable, due to the fact that Minfong Ho had already visited Cambodia, the place near my country, Thailand. She studied their cultures and traditions, which gave her the ideas to write this book. So these make the story more realistic to me, because the setting and the name of the characters are familiar, such as the name Dara. Dara is the main character in this novel, she is only twelve years old, but knows what a real family is like, which interests me a lot. The word Dara in Thai means, star and it is the same in the Cambodia language as describes in the novel. Moreover, the details about the place or the setting that Minfong describes do give me a picture in my mind. This is because the place and the geography in Cambodia is nearly the same as Thailand. In addition, someone who worked at camps on the Thai-Cambodian border told this story, so it appears that some scenes took place in Thailand told this story. Furthermore, this shows that this story is from real a situation that happened when the Khmer Rough took over in Cambodia.
Moreover, this story really shows how those people are really like and how they live with each other at the border. It is like a real family to me, they are together in one piece of land. The story impressed me very much because this story shows that people in Cambodia wouldnt mind living together and they are actually nice people. According to Kirkus Reviews Ho skillfully shapes her story to dramatize political and humanitarian issues. Hos skill of writing is very thoughtful; she describes everything in detail without letting the problems affect her appreciation of the Cambodian culture. The other thing that I like about this novel is that she wrote this story in the first person point of view, which makes the character more understandable to me. I can understand what the character is talking and thinking about and what she thinks about the refugees movement and other refugees. It is like I am actually beside the character looking at what she is looking at, feeling what she is feeling and touching what she is touching. However, this story makes me depressed sometimes, because it is quite sad to lose your parent, or your family, because of the war.
Overall, I think this novel is a very good one for everyone to read, not just for fun but also to realize how these people at the time were treated by the war. The Clay Marble is not the only story by Ho; she is also the author of Rice without Rain, another masterpiece that contains peace as well as revenge.

Dara's mother is a typical housewifely widow, Dara seems toonly be a product of her circumstances and not an individual humanbeing with her own mindset (even her confrontation with Sarun was instigated by Jantu),Jantu and Duoic were obviously inserted into the story to be good examples, Nea is overly submissive to Sarun......

The book, The Clay Marble written by Minfong Ho is a novel playing during the civil war in the border area of Cambodia and Thailand. It is a refugee story about a family describing survival, courage, love, friendship and how war turns children into adults.
The main characters in the book are Dara a twelve year old girl, her brother Sarun and Jantu.
Dara travels to the border with her brother Sarun and her mother as war refugees. They are from Siem Reap in Cambodia. At the border with Thailand in a refugee camp in Nong Chan, Dara meets Jantu, a 13 years old girl and her family, Baby, grandpa Kem and Nea. Jantu is a very courageous girl, a good artist and makes the best of everything. She is taking care of Baby (her little brother). Jantu's parents died in the war. Her cousin Nea is 18 years old and does all the cooking for both families.
After having suffered a lot in Siem Reap, the conditions in the refugee camp in Nong Chan are good. There is a lot of food and programs to get families back to start a living in Cambodia again such as rice seed distribution and the handing out of field tools. Sarun and Nea fall in love in the refugee camp and both have the ideal to go back one day to the farm and start a family. Dara and Jantu become very close friends and Jantu provides a lot of security to Dara. She gives Dara self confidence by giving Dara a clay marble, Jantu had made, with a "magic spell". As the refugee camp gets shelled, they become again refugees. Dara, Jantu and Baby lost the rest of the family in the confusion of the evacuation and Baby got wounded in a shelling. Jantu joined Baby to the hospital and Dara ends up all alone separated from Jantu and the rest of the family. The clay marble Jantu had given, provided her the security and the courage to find back her family again. She does find her family after some days close to the headquarters of the military, where her brother Sarun was being enlisted as a soldier. Her brother had changed a lot and had become heartless and lost all the ideals he had stood for before. He wanted to fight rather than living in peace with his family on the farm.
Dara picked up Jantu and Baby from the hospital. On the way back to the family Jantu was shot by one of Sarun's soldiers and died the next day. She did convince Dara that the clay marble was just a marble but that Dara had the power to convince Sarun to stay out of the army and go home to help the family on the farm and start his own family with Nea. In an emotional speech Dara convinced first her family and then Sarun to leave and go back home with the rice seeds and start a new beginning.
The readers that would best appreciate this book are those who like to read about war, adventure and drama. It is a real life story from Asia. I chose this book because I am living in Asia and I like to read dramas. I also wanted to learn more about some of the history of countries in the region. I especially liked the unexpected, sad part towards the end of the book.

I'm a 14 yr old, and I just did this bk for Lit at sch this year. I feel that this bk was very unappropriate for our age level for at 14, we surpass the recommended reading age group by TWO years. The Clay Marble was too simply written; there wasn't any deducing or analysing to do as everything was plonked down for you. Dara (the main charac) was very difficult to relate to, because of her immaturity. All the other stereotypical characs don't have real personalities either, but that would be because Minfong Ho meant it for a younger audience. It was very predictable that Jantu (Dara's influenza and manipulator) would die, for the sake of some melodrama. Most characters were not developed enough so it was difficult to feel for them. The review was not meant to be criticism directed at the author but rather an appeal to TKGS's Lit teachers (if any of them stumble across this) to consider other books with more depth for sec2 Literature.