In the late 1980’s when I was in high school we were assigned to read this book, it’s possible that it was a few years earlier in middle school. There was a young Asian boy, I remember him being Chinese or Vietnamese but he may have been Japanese because I also remember him talking about wanting a lot of “yen”. I remember it because I don’t think I ever really heard of yen before that book. Another thing I first heard of in this book was rice paddies, I don’t remember if he was running away from work on a rice paddy or if he passed by some on his journey.
I’m not sure he was running away at all he may have been on a quest of some sort, it may be that he was wanting to sell something the get money for some reason because I seem to remember he had a destination in mind.
Also, I remember a pig. I thought he had a pig with him or met a pig along the way that followed him but my mother read the book also and she doesn’t remember a pig. She doesn’t remember any more than I do about the book, all she knows is that I liked it so much I gave it to her to read. I’ve thought about this book several times over the years trying to remember it and I’ve looked all over the internet for it and I’ve asked people about it with no luck. I’m hoping it was on a lot of high school or middle school reading list and you will be able to help me.
This could be The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert DeJong. A young boy and his family flee their Chinese village when the Japanese attack it, and he is watching the ducks and the family pig on a boat, when it gets tossed about in the storm. He travels with the pig (I think he let the ducks go) and ends up adopted by an American flying unit (the 60 fathers) for a while. It has the pig and probably has yen, so there’s a good chance it’s the book you are looking for.
Thank you very much Amanda, I think this might be it! I can almost remember the ducks and the American flying unit but my memory may be playing tricks on me by now. It sounds like the book though.
It occurs to me that this might be Meindert DeJong’s ‘The House of Sixty Fathers’ which is set in China during World War 2. Tien Pao is a little Chinese boy who becomes separated from his family when they are escaping from the occupying Japanese, and makes a long journey with his pig, Glory of the Republic, to reach his family in Hengyang while avoiding capture by Japanese soldiers.
Thank you Ann, you may be right! What you’ve described is bringing it back to me, I can remember him trying to evade the Japanese soldiers. I’ll look for the book tomorrow and read a couple of chapters to see if this is it.
I doubt this is the book, but I do recall a story about two Chinese boys who were each raising pigs for the fall harvest. One boy did not want to kill his pig, so he hid and tended it in secret, while all sorts of wild stories sprang up about how big and powerful it was; the boy himself simply went about his business around the farm, including the rice fields. Mindful of this, the second boy spent the entire summer feeding and fussing over his own pig, which grows to tremendous size, wins first place and becomes the main course at the harvest feast. The first boy then brings out his own pig, which is normal sized, and he gets to keep it as a pet. When I was growing up in the ’60s, even stories set in China often mentioned “yen” for money, so it could get confusing. Hope this helps.
Thank you Panda Rosa. I don’t think that’s the book, it does sound like a fun read though and what you said about the “yen” is interesting.
What’s the name of that one? A friend of mine is looking for it? Thanks!
Thank you very much guys, I’m fairly sure it’s Meindert DeJong’s ‘The House of Sixty Fathers’ from reading your descriptions of the book and looking up the title online, I will try to find the book tomorrow and read a few chapters before I mark it as solved. I probably should now but I thought that I would recognize the title immediately when I saw it and believe it or not I have found a couple of books in the last few days that have been about young Asian children running away from work in the rice paddies or Asian children with pigs or whatever.
I have probably spent six hours over the last week looking for this book using the obvious keywords in several search engines and this title has never came up. I’ve been searching through lists of classic books and modern classics and school reading lists hoping to find it. This may end up being the best four dollars I’ve ever spent, I’d really almost given up hope thinking this was going to bother me until I went to the grave.
I’ll let you know in the next few days.
SOLVED!
Thank you very much everybody!
That is definitely the book, I got it in the mail today and red the first chapter . It’s funny when I was first trying to remember this book I had amalgamated it in my memory with The Pearl and The Day No Pigs Would Die. I thought it was a story about a boy traveling to sell a pearl to save his baby sibling who was bitten by a scorpion and along the way he would run across a cow in distress and pull a goiter out of its throat and make friends with a pig. Then when I started searching I could remember them being three different books. 🙂 It’s been twenty-five years since I’ve read any of those books, I remember liking them all so I guess I’ll try and get the other two as well.