Kampung Boy Response

When reading Kampug Boy I didn’t really understand what the story was going to be about at first. However the pages full of pictures helped me through it. When reading through the book when the author would use words such as anjung or lounge and other words it would confuse me because in my opinion it was random. Although I did learn some cool words from another language. As I continued reading about this boy’s life, I felt as if he was in a prison. As a child he could not leave or go past certain points of his house and when he did, he would have to do it secretly. I thought this was weird but then again this book is about different culture.

One thing that made me think and appreciate my own culture from this book is when the boy had to go to the banana truck and he had to suffer a painful bite. It makes me wonder why they do that. I assume it is part of the culture. It made me feel sad that they did this to these boys as such a young age. I think that this is just a custom of the culture though.

Another custom that caught my eye was how close he was with his dad and how much they got along even when he was a little boy. He looked up to his father more than he even realized. For example when he was on the verge of either passing the test or not and his father basically gave him a bribe of this could be yours if you get your grades together. This I think really opened up the boys eyes because he might not have passed the test if it wasn't for his father. I believe that the male role model in this culture is a big influence because they are role models and someone that as a child, had a lot of influence whether it was his first bath or just someone to play with.

Discoveries I have learned from reading this book are that culture in this book is very different and it boggles my mind how different my world and the boy’s world is. School is a huge priority both cultures however it is also different because of how the school is taught. The boy in the story got humiliated because he was bad at math but great at art. Therefore he was discouraged and spent most of time fishing when he got to school.

In conclusion Kampung Boy was a story that really made me think about culture differences. I really enjoyed the book overall.