Reviews

Necessary Roughness Reviewed By : Drew Wagner

Chan Kim is a teenage boy living in Los Angeles with his parents and twin sister. Chan loves to play soccer, but also makes sure he studies to make his father proud. Abogee and O-Ma own and operate a store in Los Angeles. Their business is very successful! Young is Chan’s twin sister. She is also very smart but loves to play the flute. All this happiness stops when the Kim’s find out that their Uncle Bong has gotten himself into another problem. Uncle Bong is Abogee’s brother. Abogee gave Bong some money to start his own shop in Iron River, Minnesota. When Bong gets there he finds out that owning a store is a lot harder than its sounds. Bong runs into drug dealers and a lot of debt so decides to hit the road and get out of Minnesota. In doing so, he leaves behind an unopened business. Abogee and the rest of the Kim’s decide to pack up and head up to the land of 10,000 lakes - Minnesota! When they get there they find it hard to get an apartment but finally meet Mrs. Knutsen. She agrees to rent the top floor of her house to the family. A few days later, Chan and Young Enroll in Iron Rivers high school. When they arrive, it’s the first day of school and they discover that it’s not going to be easy. They happen to be the only Koreans in the entire school. The rest of the students are white colored with blonde hair. Plus there is no soccer team for Chan or orchestra for Young. Just a band that cheers on the towns favorite sport - football! Chan meets a boy named Mikko, he is the teams quarterback. After a few lunches together Mikko persuades Chan to come play kicker for the team. The same day Young joins the marching band. Weeks go by and Chan and Young start to make new great friends. While Abogee is having great success at the store! Chan’s team makes it to the playoffs a few months later. The team does really well in the playoffs, allowing them to play the Seeyerville Heights in the Minnesota high school state championship! Then a few nights later Young and her friend Donna got into a horrible car accident leaving Donna with several broken bones and Young dead. After suffering through the loss of his beloved sister, Chan still plays in the state championship game. After Chan and the rest of the team have a spectacular game, the Iron River Miners win the state championship! Chan gave the trophy to Young in heaven, because without her he would have never played football!

In my opinion this was a wonderful book. Probably the best book I’ve read all year! This book is about football. Which I like, but it’s also about being strong and fighting through life when it’s at its hardest! I would give this a book 10 out of 10 stars. I am going to recommend this book to everybody I know. Its was a A+!

Necessary Roughness Reviewed By: Joey Carlson

Chan Kim is moving from Los Angeles to a small town in Minnesota called Iron River. He and his twin sister Young are the only Asian kids in there school. All the other kids have blond hair and blue eyes. Chan finds out that the only sport that they play in Iron River is football, and he played soccer in Los Angeles. When Chan meets the principal's son named Mikko he gets convinced to try out for the football team. Chan wants to be a kicker but since they only play nine man football he will have to play other positions too. Later Chan finds out that he made the football team. After the football practices Chan and Mikko run extra laps. One day while they were running laps Chan meets a girl named Rainey. They end up going out even though Chan's parents don't approve of relationships when they are too young. Chan also has another problem, his father doesn't want him to play football because he wants him to work at the family store. Chan refuses to work at the family's store. Later that year Chan's football team makes it to the state championship game down in MInneapolis. Chan though almost quits football becuase of a family accident that will change him for the rest of his life. Chan keeps playing though and he and his team end up winning the state championship. At first I thought that this book was going to be a boring book and I wasn't going to like it, but as the story went on the book got better and by the end of the book I ended up really liking this book. I would rate this book a 4 out of 5 stars. I would have given this book a 5 star rating but it wasn't good all though out the book. I would recommend this book for both boys and girls.