Author: Aaron Meshon

Illustrator: Aaron Meshon

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers 2013

Number of pages: 35 pages

Genre: Cultural Fiction
Take Me Out to The Yakyu is a story about a boy who loves baseball in American and Japan. Through out the story he explains his favorite part about baseball in both countries. I believe that this text would be considered a window because not a lot of people have the opportunity to get the same experiences as the boy in the story so they are unable to connect on a personal level. This text can also be considered a mirror since baseball is a big part of American culture. Although Americans are unable to connect with the Japanese baseball games, they both are the same sport. So if an American or Japanese reader picked up with book they would have the opportunity to connect with it. I really love how this text displays culture. It showed both American and Japanese culture equally and I actually learned some new things about Japanese culture from this book. The images are the main thing that really shows the different culture. On all the left pages there are images of what the boy does at American baseball games and on all the right pages it is an image of what the boy does at Japanese baseball games. So for example on page 10 he is talking about the food he gets at the games. On the left side there is a picture of a hot dog and peanuts, on the right side there is a picture of soba noodles and edamame. The images are full of color and have a lot of detail, and the text mirrors the pictures perfectly which helps describe what is going on in the culture one might not know well. One of my favorite things about the text is that on each page they have American sayings like fastball then on the opposite page they have the Japanese version of that saying. I never expected to learn a couple words in a different language from a children’s book. The text really shows two different cultures and that it is okay to have two different things part of your life. I also think that this text does a good job at showing that activities may not be as different as we think in other cultures. In both countries they are playing the same sport with the same rules. The only difference is the culture that is surrounding the game. I really enjoyed this text and I think it would be a great book to use in the classroom to show that culture can make people different and that it is important to have a good understanding of culture and that its okay to be different.