The fake-chicken kung fu fighting blues
(Book)

"Twelve-year-old video buff Anthony is devastated when his family leaves Toronto's Chinatown for Berksburg, a remote community in northern Ontario. There are no other Asian families around -- and everyone in town loves hockey, which Anthony just doesn't get. The move is even harder on his grandmother, Po Po, who doesn't speak English and puts a fake chicken over the front door for luck. Desperate to fit in, Anthony takes to the ice for the first time -- and turns out to be a disaster. But he does manage to make some friends after standing up to Buck, the school bully, with an accidental flying boot to the face. After that, Buck asks Anthony to teach him the "kung fu" he used! What Anthony can definitely do is find people with interesting stories, including a 103-year-old indigenous storyteller, a collector of food items that look like famous hockey players, and a man who insists that he was once abducted by a UFO. Video camera in hand, Anthony starts putting together a documentary about his new town. As he discovers the joys of small-town life, his new friends get an introduction to his Chinese culture, and even Po Po begins to feel at home. And when Anthony's movie makes the top ten list for a film competition, the entire town rallies behind him. The Fake-Chicken Kung Fu Fighting Blues shows both sides of a culture clash in your average Canadian town."--,Provided by publisher.

Ages 8-12.

630L,Lexile

Decoding demand: 94 (very high),Semantic demand: 100 (very high),Syntactic demand: 85 (very high),Structure demand: 89 (very high),Lexile