Pippa Park Raises Her Game

When Pippa Park gets a basketball scholarship to a fancy private school, she feels pressured to pretend like she's rich and cool so that she can fit in with her elite classmates. But how long can she keep up the farce, when her Korean family owns a laundromat and Pippa barely has money to buy a slice of pizza at the school cafeteria? With her grades slipping and her relationships in turmoil, Pippa begins to realize that some of her new friends have family secrets of their own.<br /><br />This retelling of Dicken's "Great Expectations" is utterly brilliant from start to finish! <br /><br />Instead of "Pip", the main character is Pippa. And most of the main characters found in "Great Expectations" have their counterparts in Pippa's story. Not all of them make an appearance, and many are changed in significant ways, but play similar roles in the plot. Various characters are also gender-swapped, and I loved that! I had so much fun reading along, and suddenly realizing, "Oh! This character is supposed to be so-and-so from Great Expectations!" It's not always obvious from the start who each character represents. Many of the new characters names begin with the same letter as the original characters, like a little clue to their alternate identities.<br /><br />However, although many plot points and character roles are similar to "Great Expectations", this book has its own voice, its own story, and its own delightful style!<br />It was especially interesting to see how the author took some basic plot points from Dickens and reimagined them in a modern setting with cell phones, school books, basketball, and the rich Korean-American culture that Pippa enjoys.<br /><br />Speaking of basketball and Korea, I had a unique experience with this book that affected me very closely from the very first page. <br />(Personal story time... I was forced to attend a basketball camp for a week when I was in 6th grade, and I hated it. I have never been good at sports, and I spent the entire week just learning how to dribble. The other campers laughed at me because I had no skills at all, and it was one of the most embarrassing situations of my entire life. Needless to say, I hate basketball now, and you might be wondering... Why would I pick up a MG novel about basketball? Surely, the traumatic memories of my childhood would make me hate this book.)<br /><br />This is where the genius of this book begins to make MAGIC happen!<br /><br /> The very first scene is of Pippa playing hoops by herself in a deserted playground. She describes how she loves playing basketball. She feels at home on the court, like she belongs, like all her problems just melt away when she feels the basketball between her fingertips. <br /> The writing does such a genius job of describing her passion for this sport, and it reminded me of my passion for music. I'm a professional pianist, and when I sit at the piano I feel at home, like I belong, and all the world just melts away. <br /><br />The writing uses a universal theme of having a passion for an activity, whether it is sports, or music, or art, or anything, so that I can understand that Pippa loves basketball. I can relate to her very closely, even though I don't like the same thing she likes. I understand her as a character because the writing drew me into her world.<br /><br />The writing does the same thing for Pippa's Korean-American family culture. I don't know the first thing about Korea, but I loved learning about it in this book! And I clearly understood Pippa's feeling different from other people, because her family celebrates different holidays and does things in their own way. We all feel different sometimes, and the author uses that universal theme to bring Pippa's story home to each of us.<br /><br />That is why classics remain popular for hundreds of years. They touch on universal ideas that transcend time and apply to any reader of any age anywhere. This book does an excellent job of capturing those deep themes and bringing them to life in a modern setting with a fresh voice.<br /><br />I loved reading this story and seeing which plot points stayed similar to "Great Expectations" and which things were changed. Pippa lives with her sister and brother-in-law, while her mother has stayed in Korea. <br /><br />One of my favorite characters in "Great Expectations" is Joe. He is so sweet and kind, and I loved seeing him reimagined in the character of Jung-Hwa, Pippa's brother-in-law. He really functions like a father figure in her life, encouraging her and working hard to support the family. Each of these characters are quickly given vibrant life in the first few scenes of book. For instance, Jung-Hwa has a little affectionate ritual that he does with Pippa where he boops her nose with his finger each day. Such a small detail with a world of meaning for this sweet family relationship.<br /><br />I loved the complexity of Pippa's relationship with her sister, Mina. Mina is tough on Pippa, nagging her about her grades, her chores, and making her work at the laundromat to earn her allowance. The two sisters argue and fight, but obviously love each other very much. They just aren't always the best at expressing that love to one another. Their character development and the growth of their relationship is one of the best things about this book.<br /><br />Of course, (in true Pip tradition) Pippa gets a crush on some rich boy who barely knows she's alive. The descriptions of how she feels, what she thinks, how she worries about her appearance, and wants to be cool to impress the guy... all these things are so spot on and expressive. We've all had that impossible crush at one time or another.<br /><br />I was so intrigued to read about the "cool" girls at Pippa's new school, The Royals. They seem to befriend Pippa, but we are always wondering what their agenda must be. Are they going to turn on her when they find out the truth about her being poor? Those girls are a mystery, and I loved reading about them right up to the last page when their true colors are revealed.<br /><br />I was delighted with how serious, comedic, and wild this plot ended up being. It starts out with some fairly tame school drama, but went into some intense tragedy and redemption near the end.<br /><br />If you like classics, you will love this Dickens retelling! If you like basketball, Korean-American culture, or just excellent story-telling, you will love this book. It's not just for middle-grade readers either. I'm 37, and I adore everything about Pippa Park!<br /><br />Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Media Master Publicity in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.

Korean-American seventh grader Pippa Park's is a juggler: living with her older sister and brother-in-law, rather than her Mom, in Korea, she juggles the weight of their expectations; she juggles her responsibilities at home and school, and she juggles schoolwork with her first love, basketball. She receives an unexpected basketball scholarship to an affluent private school, Lakeview Private, and decides to reinvent herself: she doesn't want to stand out as the "scholarship student", especially among the rich kids, and especially among the members of the basketball team - her former middle school's rivals! But reinventing herself comes with a price, and Pippa discovers that she's getting further away from the person she wants to be while trying to keep pace with the Royals, Lakeview's version of Queen Bees/Mean Girls/the In-Crowd. She can't turn to her sister; she can't turn to her best friend, who won't talk to her anymore; and she certainly can't turn to the Royals. When a series of antagonistic social media messages start showing up, threatening to expose Pippa's real life, she really feels lost.<br /><br />Inspired by Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, Pippa Park Raises Her Game is a relatable middle grade story about a middle schooler dealing with the school stress, family stress,  an unrequited crush (with his own family stress), and the stress of keeping her real life secret from her glam friends at school. She's witty and dorky and just wants to do the right thing, but why is the right thing so hard to do? We want Pippa to get it right, because she's us.<br /><br />Kudos to Erin Yun for making The Royals a complex, smart group of characters, too! They're not vapid Mean Girls, even if some of them - not all, by the way - are straight-up stereotypical. First off, they're not cheerleaders! Let's hear it for breaking the stereotype! They are unapologetically feminine, and they're all business on the basketball court, showing readers that real girls don't always wear pom-poms; sometimes, they slam dunk. There's an interesting subplot with Pippa's tutor-turned-crush, Eliot, and his family's long-standing emotional baggage, which feeds nicely into Pippa's main story.<br /><br />Pippa Park Raises Her Game is a slam-dunk for middle grade readers. It's smart, funny, and gives readers a heroine they can root for.

Pippa Park is a plucky heroine and I love having a new middle grade novel with basketball and Korean culture for readers. Pippa is awarded a scholarship to an elite school with the condition that she keep her GPA at 3.0 and above. Immediately she feels the pressure in keeping up with practice, homework, and helping her sister with the family business. On top of that are the difficulties of finding real friends in her new school. She has real concerns about sharing her life with them as she sees them casually dropping large sums of money for mani-pedis and movie marathons. What do you do when your new friends and old friends are side by side in a restaurant? Pippa's struggles are real and authentic. The additional layer of "Great Expectations" retelling was a bit of a stretch and may be confusing to middle grade readers who are still unfamiliar with Dickens. The basketball action and sweet ending will make up for that. Hand this to fans of "Front Desk."<br /><br />Thank you to Fabled Film Press and Edelweiss for a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I won this book in a goodreads giveaway. It’s an interesting book that looks at what it means to follow your dream when everyone else wants you to live by their dreams

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Pippa is a likable character, as is her friend Buddy. Her struggles to fit in at a new school are authentic as are the situations she experiences. I liked that some of the students at the expensive private school were portrayed as kind and true friends as well, dispelling the stereotype that all rich kids are spoiled. I am looking forward to sharing this story with my students.

Pippa Park Raises Her Game is a very good and entertaining debut novel by author Erin Yun. My wife couldn't put the book down when she began reading it one day last week, and read the entire 262 inviting, easy-reading pages in one night. I was also pulled in once I began reading, curious to remain by Pippa's side to see how her life unfolded at the prestigious Lakeview Private School, after being awarded a scholarship and transferring there from the less esteemed Victoria Middle School. <br /><br />As anyone who has survived adolescence knows, life in middle school--or as we called it where I was growing up, junior high--can be a time of anxiety, stressful situations, joy and laughter, tears and triumphs. It is the ultimate growing experience. Pippa goes through it all, leaving her familiar and comfortable surroundings and friends at Victoria for Lakeview. She wants to fit in with her new and "upper-income" classmates and basketball teammates, so she shelters her past--and current--life from them, not wanting to expose her modest upbringing and what they might consider her lower station in life. Like most kids of her age, Pippa just wants to fit in and be accepted.<br /><br />The book flows nicely with a warm tone and a descriptive narrative that is comforting and places you right at home and in school with Pippa. And the small details about her Korean-American upbringing--the family life and expectations, the Korean foods and snacks, and her loveable and kind brother-in-law, Jung-Hwa, bring an additional, savory level of ethnic seasoning to the story.<br /><br />Pippa is an endearing character that you find yourself feeling for, hurting with, relating to, cheering for, and, ultimately, hoping to celebrate with. The book, geared to young readers, yet entirely enjoyable to an older audience such as this 50-something man and his wife, is sweet and charming, interlaced with life lessons, suspense, drama, and fun. I think Pippa Park is destined for even bigger and better things! I hope we will see much more of her and Ms. Yun in the future.

Great story! Geared toward a middle-grade audience, it has a wonderful theme about staying true to oneself and not forgetting where one started out in life. Other reviews have called it a modern twist on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.<br />I think anyone trying to navigate through life in middle school would really enjoy this one!

What a fantastic book!  Discussing topics such as socioeconomic status, scholarships, immigration, and loyalty, Pippa Park Raises Her Game makes an incredible statement on what it means to deal with all of these and only be in middle school.  Pippa misses her mother dearly, who she hasn't seen since her mother was deported, and now she must deal with her older sister being her caretaker--awkward, right?  Her sister wants nothing but the best for Pippa, and wants her to take every opportunity that she never had for herself.  But Pippa just wants a normal life where she's allowed to play basketball and get average grades in math.  Not a life where she and her sister and sister's husband live in a small apartment, and not a life where she sometimes has to run shifts at their family's laundromat.<br /><br />But when she's offered a full ride scholarship to the prestigious school on the other side of town, her sister jumps at the opportunity.  This induction to a glimpse at a new, richer life enchants Pippa, and she soon forgets her old friends in preference of her new friends who spend Friday afternoons getting manicures and exchanging charms on their bracelets.  But how long can she hold up against her own deception?  Especially when someone claims to know Pippa's secret...<br /><br />This book flowed well, made use of the awkwardness it is to be thirteen, and brought back memories of what it was like to buy J-14 and Teen Vogue at the grocery store.  I hope that this book helps create the same memories that I have and that I have seen myself represented in.  Overall, this book was so endearing and enthusiastic in its characters.  I definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to decolonize their bookshelf and to those who love middle grade dramas about money, boys, and grades.<br /><br />Review cross-listed <a href="http://www.littleladylibrarian.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow noopener">here</a>!

A play on Great Expectations with some fast-paced moves of its own, Pippa Park Raises her Game is the story of a seventh grade girl from a local public school who receives a mysterious scholarship to the prestigious private school in her town to help the basketball team put one in the win column over their rivals. And the rival just happens to be the school from which Pippa transferred. Wanting to keep her roots as a first generation Korean American who works at her family's laundry a secret from the seemingly perfect private school crowd, Pippa has nothing but challenges on her way to fitting in at her new school, not to mention keeping up her GPA, especially in Algebra. But solving for X becomes only one of Pippa's problems as trouble seems to be guarding her like the defense at the three point line. When it all comes down to the buzzer, Pippa finds a way to take the shot that could put her on the winning team. Erin Yun's debut novel is a slam dunk of a story that takes on major issues like stereotypes, friendship, and fitting in with others. Middle school readers will identify with Pippa's challenges and cheer her on as she learns what it takes to be proud of who you are.

This review and many more can be found on my blog: <a href="https://feedyourfictionaddiction.com/2020/02/pippa-park-raises-her-game-by-erin-yun-review-giveaway.html" rel="nofollow noopener">Feed Your Fiction Addiction</a><br /><br />To sum this book up, it’s <b><i>Mean Girls</i> for middle graders with the addition of basketball and a big lie that threatens to blow up everything!</b><br /><br />I know this is a <i>Great Expectations</i> retelling, but honestly, as I was reading this, I couldn’t help but think of Mean Girls often—it just has that vibe (I guess I’d forgotten most of GA, which I read in my high school days, but that didn’t cut down on my enjoyment of the book). Pippa has just transferred to a private school from the local public school, and she feels like a fish out of water. She wants so much to fit in, but she isn’t really sure how. All of the kids in her class come from money, and they seem to have a bunch of expectations that she has no idea how to live up to. So, she lies. Or, at least, leaves out a whole bunch of details. She doesn’t want them to know that she’s poor or that she came from the public school they seem to despise, so she just leaves those little facts out. Problem is, it gets harder and harder to hide. Plus, she has a crush on the boy that the leader of the Royals also has her eye on—not good—and her relationship with her best friend from her old school ends up becoming very strained.<br /><br /><b>But I have to say that this story ended up veering from the <i>Mean Girls</i> formula in the end, and I was quite pleased with how everything turned out.</b> Pippa not only learned to be proud of who she is, but she also realized that everyone else may not have been judging her nearly as much as she thought (which is probably true 99% of the time in real life). Pippa messes up in this book—she makes some big mistakes, but she also learns from them. And I fell in love with her and found myself rooting for her the whole time!<br /><br />Having basketball as a backdrop will appeal to quite a few kids, but they definitely don’t have to be sports fans to enjoy it—the basketball team is really just used to show the dynamics of Pippa’s new friends. But kids who do like sports will be drawn to that—there are a couple of scenes that highlight basketball, and I felt like they were very well written and I could easily imagine what was happening in the games and practices without having to know a whole lot about the sport. The book also features aspects of Korean-American culture, especially the food, which is described wonderfully!<br /><br /><b>Overall, I think this is a wholly appealing story that will keep kids reading!</b><br /><br /><i>***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***</i>