Korean American seventh grader Pippa Park gets a scholarship to a rich private school where she tries to ingratiate herself with the popular clique while covering up her working class, public school background. She’s also busy with trying to understand algebra, play winning basketball, and take care of her chores and responsibilities at home. The popular girls get mean; Pippa gets exhausted, enmeshed in lies and half-truths; and the good-looking math tutor that Pippa’s sister hired for her barely acknowledges Pippa’s existence.
It’s a fairly cliche plot with a standard cast of characters. However, the thing that made this book fun for me is that it’s a “reimagining” of the Charles Dickens classic Great Expectations. Pippa is Pip, of course. Her rich math tutor, Eliot Haverford, who lives in a mansion and deals with unreasonable family expectations, is a take-off on Estella. Pippa lives with her older sister, Mina, who also has high expectations for Mina’s academic achievements, and with Mina’s husband, Jung-hwa, who is a warm and fuzzy Joe Gargery. And so on.
If reading this book would cause some middle school readers to take on Great Expectations, I’m all for it. I think Great Expectations is one of Dickens’ most accessible novels. I read it aloud to three of my children the they were about ten, eight and six years old. I’m not sure the six year old followed all of the plot and action, but she listened with the other two who did demonstrate an understanding of the basic outline and ideas of the novel. And we all enjoyed the read aloud, so I’m sure an average middle schooler could handle Dickens’ rags to riches story.
Pippa Park Raises her Game has a lot of crushing on boys, mean girls being mean, and Pippa herself being somewhat deceitful and ashamed of her family and background. If you would rather not read about any or all of these subjects, then caveat emptor. Never fear, however, good does triumph, and Pippa, like Pip, learns her lessons after much drama and turmoil brought on mostly by her own actions.
Oh, I liked the fact that Pippa listens to K-pop and watches K-dramas. These are good details in a good, solid book that reads a little bit like a K-drama.