Title : The Clay Marble

Written by : Minfong Ho

Literary Conventions
Historical fiction, character, storytelling

( Dara's is one of the thousands of Cambodian families separated or destroyed by war, Dara makes friends with Jantu, who has an almost magical touch in creating toys from mud and scraps of fabric. When the camp is bombed, Jantu makes a magic marble out of clay that helps Dara reunite with her family. Is the clay marble really have power or was it Jantu who created it to make Dara have confident to herself? )



( Dara and her family must leave their war-torn Cambodian village in 1980 and flee to a refugee camp near the border to find safety, food and supplies. The story relates the trip and the trials of living at the camp. Dara makes friends with Jantu, a young girl with a great imagination who is a wonderful storyteller. Jantu fashions a clay marble for Dara but tells her that the magic is in the making, not in the marble itself. While at the camp, the family must move again, and during this move, Dara becomes separated from her family and lost. Courageously she searches for her family and in doing so discovers her own inner strength and ability to survive. )



Background Information
On January 1, 1975 the Khmer Rouge (Cambodian communists) led by Pol Pot began surrounding the government of Premier Lon Nol of Cambodia. On April 17, 1975 they captured Phnom Penh, the capital and ordered everyone to leave all major cities. Anyone who resisted was killed. Approximately 2.5 million marched into the countryside and one million of these people died from starvation and overwork. In the early 1980's the Vietnamese attacked Cambodia. Most people, like the family in this book, suffered enormously as they were torn away from their homes and forced into refugee camps. Some escaped by boat to foreign lands. Many stayed and eventually returned to their homes to start life anew.


It would be interesting to read this book in cross curricula study, which includes the Vietnam War or modern American History.

Themes

• Family and the support it gives is a very important part of the Cambodian culture.
• Friendship can give enormous strength and support.
• It takes great courage to follow your own beliefs and to do what you know is right.
• The ability to hope for a better life can sustain one even under the most miserable conditions.
• One can have the courage and strength to persevere even in extremely adverse circumstances.

- This storybook is not thick it have interesting things that caught attention in every chapter if you are a fast reader you can finished reading this book within a month.


-As you all can see it is written by Mingfong Ho, she wrote a book ''Sing to the Dawn'' which is one of the best selling. She was once a Singaporeans. She wrote this book ( the clay marble ) to tell us how she feel during those days.

More about Mingfong Ho

Minfong Ho was born in 1951 in

Rangoon, Burma. Her father, Rih-Hwa, was

an economist and her mother, Lienfung, was

a chemist and a writer. Ho spent her childhood in Singapore and Thailand and became

fluent in three languages: Chinese, Thai, and

English. 

Ho attended Tungai University in Taiwan

before transferring to Cornell University in

Ithaca, New York. In 1973 she received a

degree in history and economics from

Cornell. While there, she began a short story

called “Sing to the Dawn.” Ho didn’t expect

many people to read the story. She wrote it

mostly because she missed Thailand.

Eventually, however, she entered it into a

short story contest. Ho won an award and

was asked to turn the story into a novel,

which was published in 1975. Ho used the

money earned from the publication of Sing to

the Dawn to set up scholarship funds for girls

in Thailand.

After graduating from Cornell, Ho

returned to Asia and worked as a journalist

in Singapore, a teacher at a university in

Thailand, a laborer at a plywood factory, and

a representative for a trade union. In 1976

Ho married John Value Dennis Jr., a soil 

scientist, and moved back to Ithaca, New

York. There she earned a master’s degree in

creative writing from Cornell and worked as

a teaching assistant.

In 1980 Ho saw images of Cambodian

war refugees on television. She took a leave

of absence from her teaching job and went to

work as a nutritionist and relief worker for

Catholic Relief Services on the ThaiCambodian border. This experience helped

her to write The Clay Marble (1991).

Ho continues to write books for children

and young adults. She has presented workshops in middle schools and high schools and

has won countless awards for her writing.

like many writers, award-winning novelist

Minfong Ho writes about the people and

places she knows well and cares about. Ho

grew up in three different countries in

Southeast Asia and became a writer because

she wanted readers, especially children, to

appreciate the countries of her youth. As a

child, Ho was disappointed with many of the

picture books about Asian cultures. They

were often written by authors who were not

from Asia and seldom told the stories of ordinary people. Ho writes: 

Children’s books . . . were [usually] about

princes and emperors and/or their elephants,

peacocks, and tigers. . . . This was not the 

Asia I knew.

Ho wanted to write honestly about real people who dealt with real-life situations. Since

her decision to become a writer, Ho has written short stories, picture books, and three

prize-winning novels.

So hurry up ! Try buying one of Mingfong Ho storybook '' The Clay Marble''