Patrick

University Laboratory High School 1212 W. Springfield Ave. Urbana IL   October 1, 2008 Marc Aronson Author Atheneum Books for Young Readers 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 Mark Aronson:

I liked your book __Race__ and I learned a lot from it. Obviously writing this book was a challenging task and I’d like to know what gave you the inspiration to write it. Also, how did you find all the information in your book __Race__?

I thought the story in the introduction was good way to start __Race__ and it made me want to read about what you were going to say next. Overall, I liked most of the information you gave about race in your book. Also, I liked how you grouped all the subtopics in chapter 10 with titles like Germans = Not Jewish etc. It made it clear what you were going to say next. In some chapters, you had stories that helped convey and illustrate your points. These stories helped me remember your key ideas.

I have two issues with __Race__. My first issue is when you claim that all southerners were prejudiced against blacks and considered blacks “bad.” For example, on page 167 you say that “Just before the 1890’s Southern whites began a rampage on lynching.” The passage makes it appears that all white southerners were bad and hated blacks, but actually there were whites who didn’t approve of slavery and thought it was wrong. My other issue was that I was surprised by your openness about your strong dislike towards the Germans on pages 208-209. Throughout the book it felt like you were against racism but I felt that the passage didn’t fit in with that idea. Although I had those two issues, I thought __Race__ was a very informative and well written book and showed me the many hardships around the world during that time. Sincerely,

Patrick Wong