Sunday, August 12, 2012

Boys Over Flowers


Boys Over Flowers: Volume 1. Yoko Kamio. English adaptation by Gerard Jones. (2003). San Francisco, CA: Viz Media.

Awards and Honors: none

Review:
When working class teenager Tsukushi Makino is accepted into an elite high school, Eitoku Academy, she immediately feels out of place. Things get worse for her when the popular boy's clique, the F4, decides that they want her out of their school. The group mercilessly bullies her and at first Tsukushi is scared, but she eventually decides to fight back. Further complicating matters, Tsukushi's bravery causes her popularity amongst her classmates at Eitoku Academy to rise, and she begins to develop a crush on one of the members of the F4. The first volume in the series leaves off with Tsukushi striking an uneasy truce with the F4, but with problems developing with the girls at Eitoku Academy.

Opinion:
I am not a big reader of manga, so unfortunately I don't have much to compare this book with. The soap opera type serial did not appeal to me, though I know it is popular with many older tweens in my community. I would personally hesitate to recommend this book to younger tweens, because the bullying scenes are pretty intense.

Ideas:
This shojo manga series has also spawned a popular Korean television drama. Manga has great appeal to the community that I work in, and I think it would be cool to make a display of Korean DVDs and the books or manga that inspired them.

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