The Bicycle Man

Rating:
Summary: My son exclaimed "Read it again!!"
Review: My 7 year old son loved this book! Each page reeled him in more: the sports day fun, the soldiers, the appealing black character, the bike tricks. He did not want the story to stop. It has been a long time since he asked me to re-read a book!!

Rating:
Summary: A charming vignette. . .
Review: Soon after World War II, in occupied Japan, two American soldiers (we don't learn why they're there or where they're headed) walk onto a Japanese school yard, and one of them delights the assembled students with bicycle-riding tricks. A charming vignette of the personal interaction between a pair of young men and a group of children, strangers with different languages and from different cultures, whose paths cross briefly and will never cross again. Doubly charming to me because my father, a young soldier, was there at the time, and could ride the bicycle backwards better than anyone I've ever met.