Scan barcode
A review by tcbueti
Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park
4.0
This seemed poky until the stunner of a reveal of why Jim stopped writing back.
Note-keeping Maggie, after scoring/recording baseball games, studies the Korean "conflict" so she can understand what her friend Jim is going through--years and the border doesn't move--so many people killed. Not officially a war?
My main concern is that the author characterizes the event that breaks Jim as friendly fire--but it was a straight up massacre by American soldiers: No Gun Ri.: 3 days of air bombing and shooting any South Korean refugees who approached American lines. Brief research indicates that the Korean War had probably the highest civilian casualties of any American war.
So although I think it is admirable for the author to write about it, I sort of wish she had been clearer about it, but also: it is a pretty big swerve for a baseball novel. In her afterward she notes that her parents were teenagers in Korea during the war. Pretty powerful.
Note-keeping Maggie, after scoring/recording baseball games, studies the Korean "conflict" so she can understand what her friend Jim is going through--years and the border doesn't move--so many people killed. Not officially a war?
My main concern is that the author characterizes the event that breaks Jim as friendly fire--but it was a straight up massacre by American soldiers: No Gun Ri.: 3 days of air bombing and shooting any South Korean refugees who approached American lines. Brief research indicates that the Korean War had probably the highest civilian casualties of any American war.
So although I think it is admirable for the author to write about it, I sort of wish she had been clearer about it, but also: it is a pretty big swerve for a baseball novel. In her afterward she notes that her parents were teenagers in Korea during the war. Pretty powerful.