Project+Mulberry

Julia, a young Korean girl who lives in a town called Plainfield in America, is best friends with a boy named Patrick. Patrick has several sblings, so he keeps all of his things at Julia's house. He loves to read! Patrick and Julia need to raise an animal for the Wiggle Project. They think about doing lots of different things, but none of the ideas sound very good. Finally, Julia's mom says that they should raise silkworms like she did in Korea when she was a young girl. Patrick thinks this is a wonderful idea, but Julia doesn't. Julia is only fascinated by the fact that they will get to use the silk they get from the worms to make embroidery. This would count as two projects! The only problem is that silkworms only eat mulberry tree leaves. After quite a struggle, Patrick and Julia find the only mulberry tree in town. It belongs to Cal Dixon, an old black man. Julia's mom is not fond of black people, and Julia doesn't quite know why. Julia and Patrick harvest the leaves for the silkworms they bought online. When they get them in the mail, they are only tiny eggs in something that looks like a test-tube. They put them on the leaves in their terrarium, and after a few weeks, they hatch. They are described as little black hairs. They grow and grow and grow, and feed of the mulberry tree leaves Patrick and Julia give them. After a few weeks, they are the size of their finger and eat like pigs! They stop eating and spin their cocoons. They make silk, which comes from their mouths, but they have to boil their cocoons and kill the worms so that they get the silk. Otherwise, the worms would spit something into the silk to dissolve it, and there would be a huge hole in the silk. If Julia wants to do embroidery, she needs the silk to make into thread. Unfortunately, the worms will not turn into moths. Julia decides to kill five, because that would be enough thread for the embroidery. She could have twenty one worms left, and they would turn into moths! Julia starts on embroidery with it. She makes the life cycle of a silkworm with the silk, and the project is a huge success. Patrick and Julia's project gets 2nd place at the fair!

Korean culture is very different from American culture. They eat kimshee, which is kind of like a cabbage with lots of spices. Korean people are often mistaken for Chinese or Japanese people. They actually are not at all similar to the other Asians. They have different kinds of food, especially noodles. - Casey Sybesma

I would not recommend this book because it was sort of boring to read. The chapters were short, which I liked. It was easy to read through, but it was not enjoyable. It is a lot different from other books, just because of the dialogue. The characters often say "Gak!", which I thought was strange. - Casey Sybesma