The Fake-Chicken Kung Fu Fighting Blues

The excerpt above is the kind of pep talk that Anthony Chung gives himself as he makes his way to his first day of school in the fictional Northern Ontario community of Berksberg. It’s a world away from where he grew up with what he calls the “perfect life within the crazy streets of Chinatown” in Toronto, but he is the kind of person who does his best with what he is given. When Anthony and his older sister learn that they have to move to a new town, his response is to take the news in stride, hers is to welcome the change, and their grandmother, who lives with them, is devastated. Having spoken Chinese her entire life, she doesn’t feel that it will be easy to make friends in tiny Berksberg, and she shares these worries with her grandson. Anthony uses his naturally buoyant personality to cope with the difficulties of moving to a new place, difficulties like making new friends, finding ways to connect with the community and helping his family to enjoy the new town.

With Anthony moving from the big city of Toronto to the small town, it could have seemed like a natural fit for the novel to include a boy-learns-to-play-hockey storyline, but the author chose to give the new-boy-in-town story a twist. In Toronto, he and his friends regularly created videos of themselves doing ridiculous things, even going so far as filming a fish soap opera using plastic fish as the actors, and, when Anthony moves away, he continues to use his phone to make and post videos. Realizing that his grandmother is feeling anxious about venturing into town, Anthony decides to make her a video of the people in the town going about their lives. While he is making this video, he learns that hockey is more than just a sport for the people in Berksberg to watch and play. Hockey is important to all generations for many different reasons, and, as Anthony interviews friends and neighbours, his casual video idea turns into a documentary. It takes Anthony several weeks to complete the video, and the process has Anthony learning more about the culture of the town than he could have imagined when he first decided to create something that might encourage his grandmother to come out of her shell.

The Fake-Chicken Kung Fu Fighting Blues contains four full-page comics which usually feature Anthony and his friends involved in an activity with a funny punch line that accentuates the text. For example, when the storyline relates to the creation of videos in Chinatown, the comic includes Anthony’s best friend in Toronto making up a story about dragon fruit in a grocery store, and when they are in Berksberg, the kids are spending time on a frozen pond with their hockey sticks. Each time, the illustrations augment the story but are separate scenes from what is depicted in the text. The illustrator, Kean Soo, has provided several opportunities for the reader to see Anthony’s emotions in the comics, and Anthony’s grandmother appears in several as well, but the best of all of the comics is one where four significant members of the town are highlighted just after Anthony describes them for his documentary. The comics and individual illustration distributed throughout are a wonderful part of this book.

Anthony Chung is funny, truly funny, but he doesn’t make unkind choices with his jokes and considers when his humour might have hurt the feelings of others. The author has added extra layers to his personality beyond that of a boy who makes funny videos and posts them for his friends. Anthony tries to help the kids he meets in his new school when he sees that they are being mistreated by another student even as he acknowledges that he also might become the new target. He doesn’t have a perfect relationship with his grandmother, even admitting that he occasionally finds her scary, and he works hard to make their new life in Berksberg more welcoming for her by suggesting that she teach his friends Tai Chi. When Anthony tries new things, like playing hockey for the first time with the experienced players in town, the reader can’t help but hope that things go well for him. Anthony’s voice is compelling and easy to listen to throughout the pages, and it’s easy to see why the people of the town want to tell him their stories in his film.

The final chapters of the book see Anthony’s friends and family encouraging him to enter his popular documentary into a film festival for young filmmakers. After the first YouTube responses to his video are so positive, Anthony decides it is worth sharing “Berksberg: A Portrait of a Town and its Hockey” with a panel of judges, and he gives it a try. When he receives the news that his film has been selected for the festival, he and a group of supporters from Berksberg head to Toronto for the big event and a chance to meet up with some of his old friends.

The end of the novel hits the right notes for a story about a kid like Anthony and a town like Berksberg. The Fake-Chicken Kung Fu Fighting Blues is not a standard fish out of water story about the big city kid who has to learn to play hockey to fit in – it is carefully written, compelling story about family and friendship.