Erin YunBesprekingen

It's probably a good thing I didn't know about the Great Expectations angle until after I started reading -- I have terrible memories of that book from 7th grade -- but this book is clever and Pippa is a great character. I'm a big fan of her loving family (even if they have high expectations) and her solid skill with basketball. Friendship drama, some cyberbullying, some poverty shaming. Mother had to return to Korea, Pippa lives in Western Mass with her sister and husband. Very tween coming of age -- making mistakes, learning and taking responsibility. Really well done.

Seventh-grader Pippa Park lives with her older sister, Mina, and Mina's husband, Jung-Hwa. Mina runs a laundromat and Jung-Hwa works at a factory; Mina and Pippa's mother lives back in Korea. Mina is strict with Pippa and has forbidden her to be on Victoria Middle's basketball team this year due to her grades, but when Pippa gets scouted by a fancy private school and her scholarship is contingent on her playing basketball, Mina agrees. At her new school, Pippa tries to fit in with the "Royals," popular girls (some nice, some mean), but soon someone is cyberbullying her. Between that, stressing over her math grades, and worrying that her new friends will learn who she really is, Pippa is struggling - and then her mom is in a car accident.

Pippa makes a series of familiar bad choices. Her motivation for wanting a new life is murky, and her desire to remain friends with the Royals is told more than shown. Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile middle grade story featuring a sympathetic character plunged into a new world.

Quotes

Stereotypes sucked, but sometimes not being able to live up to the stereotype ["Aren't Asians supposed to be good at math?"] felt even worse. (19)

How could Mina forbid me from playing on the team? It was the one thing I was really good at, and she had taken it away from me. (40)

Had that been a successful encounter - or a terrible one? And why was it so hard to tell the difference between the two? (73)

I hadn't exactly lied, but I hadn't corrected people's wrong ideas about me - and it was getting harder and harder to keep the truth hidden.... I'd wanted a different life, but changing myself into the popular, private school Pippa had left me feeling more alone than ever. (146)

...I felt haunted by the sense I was missing out on something fun somewhere. (157)

"Remember...the lower you fall, the more room you have to rise. This will pass, eventually." (Jung-Hwa to Pippa, 233)

...most of what he said was stuff that I already knew deep down. (234)½

Really engaging middle-grade story about family, friendship, and fitting in. Pippa was under so much pressure with school and basketball and family stuff on top of being the new kid at a fancy school, and I just wanted good things for her! I liked this one a lot.

(Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.)

A loose re-telling of Great Expectations, though it’s the original aspects like Pippa’s family where this shone brightest.

There still aren’t that many books that feature female athletes, so it was great to see Pippa participating in this sport she loves, playing basketball with the aggression of a star player yet at the same time being a good teammate.

Since Pippa spends much of the novel pursuing popularity at the expense of friends and family, she makes plenty of choices along the way that will make you cringe, but at the same time, it’s such an identifiable situation, at some point practically everyone has compromised who they are to some degree in an effort to fit in only to regret it later, so you can’t help but feel for Pippa and root for her to see the errors of her ways, to see that despite how others make you feel, there really isn’t any shame in having less money or a different culture.

When it came to the character of Eliot, hewing close to Great Expectations, having him be cold and aloof like Estella, well, it kind of sucked the joy out of experiencing Pippa’s crush alongside her since this boy never ever felt worthy of her admiration, ninety-nine percent of the time he’s rude to her for no reason and I just found myself wishing she would tell him off. Ultimately, I thought Eliot and his family drama didn’t feel all that necessary to telling Pippa’s story, it just kind of seemed like something wedged in to represent that part of Great Expectations, not that it was poorly written, I just felt like I would have rather those pages maybe focused on her friendship with Buddy or something else that was more personal to Pippa than Eliot’s family.

That’s why Pippa’s family scenes were easily my favorites in the book because of how intimate and personal they felt. I loved the dynamics of their family, the sister who has to step in as mom to Pippa, who feels she has to be harder on her than a sister would want to be, the brother-in-law who is the sweetest guy around, I can’t imagine any reader not adoring him, and Pippa, who fights Mina at every turn as kids will do, she is very much their daughter even if it isn’t in the conventional sense. I had such empathy for each of them, for Mina so often having to be the “bad guy,” for Jung forever trying to play peacemaker, and for Pippa, too, who has these painful moments of being ashamed of her family circumstances because the outside world has made her feel that way, there’s something very real about those emotions, their household, in the arguments with the undercurrent of warmth, in comforting with food, in being there for Pippa when she’s messed up and all she expects is their disappointment in her, those are the moments I’ll remember, the reasons I’ll read more from this author.½

I loved this adaptation of Great Expectations, honestly more than the original. Pippa blends all of the problems, and opportunities both taken and squandered by the original Pip and makes a much more likeable and relatable character. I would.rwcommend this book to anyone interested (or not) in GE and see what they think.

An aspect I especially loved was the #ownvoices rep from the author about Korean culture. I have already passed this book along to a friend that is taking part in the Asian Readathon in May 2020

When Pippa Park receives an unexpected scholarship to a private school, she decides to keep her public school past a secret in order to fit in better with the popular girls. As one might expect, this complicates matters.

We all have specific plot devices that particularly appeal to us, and ones that get on our nerves. A friend of mine hates the familiar trope of middle schoolers who develop new interests and lose friendships because of it. Me, I'm not a big fan of the "living a lie" scenario, where a character needlessly complicates her life by pretending to be someone she's not, or by obscuring certain key facts about her history or personality, as Pippa does. Nevertheless, I thought this book was well-written an interesting, with great characters and lots of interesting #ownvoices detail about Korean American culture. For young readers who enjoy contemporary narratives, I would certainly recommend this.

Pippa Park's spunk, determination and heart make her a character to love as she dribbles through all sorts of unexpected troubles.

Pippa Park might be great at basketball, but math is not her thing, and that causes some major troubles. Being raised by her older sister and her husband—since their mother had to return to Korea due to a lack of a green card—life wouldn't be too bad, but her older sister is strict. That means no basketball until Pippa gets her grades back up. When she's suddenly informed that she's been given a scholarship to the private school with expectations that she'll improve their basketball team, she not only can't believer her luck, she has no clue where it came from. She might be thrilled, but she's also knows that going to a rich school won't be easy. And it's even worse than she suspected.

What a engaging read! Pippa has the perfect balance of problems, humor, drama, determination and a little suspense. While it appears at times to hit cliche moments from a poor-kid-hits-rich-kid drama, these usually swing into completely different and unexpected directions, making it hard to know what Pippa's really up against and who she can depend on. Every scene adds something new to the story, making it a read, which isn't easily put down as she tries to find her spot in life and figure out how she can juggle everything.

Not only is this a school drama, but the author hits upon other topics. Pippa is Korean, and her family has been divided thanks to her mother's inability to remain in the US. Yet, she wants the best for her kids and leaves them behind...but the love and connections are still there. Aspects of the Korean culture flows in with ease, offering insight without becoming forced or overpowering. Even the other characters deal with their own problems, ranging from jealousy to dealing with family loss. And yet all of this never comes across as too serious thanks to the author's ability to sprinkle in just the right amount of humor and ease at just the right time. It's definitely a read to recommend.

I won an ARC copy through Library Thing and enjoyed reading this even more than I thought I would.

Seventh-grader Pippa Park already has a lot on her plate trying to keep up with her guardian sister's high expectations for her; when she gets a scholarship to an elite private school in the rich part of town, Pippa now also wants desperately to seem cool to her new classmates. But fitting in seems to mean making concessions about who she really is. Can Pippa juggle hiding the truth about her working-class family and public school background? Or should she just try and be her true self?

This was an excellent read, worth all the early praise it has received. The book loosely uses the framework of Great Expectations to structure its narrative of a Korean-American girl trying to fit in. I'm not sure if young readers will realize that the book is using elements of Great Expectations (we didn't read that title until high school in my school district), but it won't take away from the book if they are unfamiliar with the Dickens title. However, I do think a fun Easter egg is the cover illustration including a copy of the book in Pippa's locker.

By telling a compelling story and not being didactic at all, this book contains many positive messages about the values of true friendship, hard work, and a loving family. Readers will learn some Korean customs and words as well; again, these are fit neatly into the narrative. The problems presented for Pippa in the book vary in their complexity, but many are relatable to the middle-grade audience, such as school clique dynamics, studying for an important test, playing in the big game, etc. Yun seems to really know her audience and write to them. (I've recently read a few supposedly middle grade books that felt like the authors were still writing for an adult audience. This was refreshingly not an issue here.)

Pippa is a likable character as are many of the other characters; even characters who are less likable are well-written and do not come across as one-note caricatures. The book concludes in a way that ties up the storylines neatly, yet I could see follow-up books working quite nicely as we see more of what Pippa goes through and achieves during her years at Lakeview School.½

Pippa Park, a middle-school student whose family owns a laundromat, receives a basketball scholarship to go to a private school. Once there, she faces new pressures along with her new opportunities, as she sets out to reinvent herself and hide her background from her classmates.

The book is intended to be a reimagining of Charles Dickens' Great Expecations so it amused me to look for parallels between this and the classic work. The first, and most overt similarity is in the names of the protagonists: Pippa and Pippin. Similar, too, are the protagonists' family circumstance.

Pippin lived with his sister and her husband, Joe whereas Pippa lives with her sister Mina and her husband, Jung-Hwa, because their mother, Ji-Mon, had to leave America when her work visa expired.

Details of the story-line are updated and subtly changed, but still follow their Dickensian precedent. Hence, instead of a convict named Magwitch whom Pippin encounters in a cemetery, Erin Yun's protagonist is startled one night by a hoodie-wearing stranger in the woods by the basketball court.

The Haverford family, of whom the father is administrator at Pippa's new school, also includes upper-classman Eliot who tutors Pippa in math. And the Haverford family is overshadowed by a tragedy that befell their Aunt Evelyn.

Whether or not readers recognize parallels between this and Dickens' work, I think that they will enjoy the story for its individual merits. Fitting in, both on and off the court, trying to juggle school and home ... readers will find a lot to relate to in Pippa Park's first-person story.

I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers

Pippa Park Raises her Game is modern middle grade retelling of Great Expectations with a Korean American, basketball playing, middle school girl as the main character. And I loved it! It is a great story in its own right, so even if a reader hasn’t read Great Expectations they should really enjoy it, but it was also so much fun to see the elements pulled from the classic incorporated into this story. Pippa is such a relatable middle schooler, trying to make friends and fit in and ultimately realizing that the best friends are the ones who like you for who you are. I look forward to the authors next book!

First the negative - The copy I received was not bound properly as I had to almost break the spine as words tended to drift into it. I hope the finished product wasn't that way. That's the only negative. It was a good thing that it was worth the struggle.
Thanks to Fabled Films Press for sending me the ARC of this wonderful book. I much enjoyed the story of Pippa Park and her trying to fit in at a private school. Author Erin Yun has written a marvelous tale of Park's adventures. If there is more Pippa adventures I would surely read them.

I will share this book with my grandchildren but will buy a more readable copy for them.