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In the mood for another how-to parenting book? Two Korean-American sisters have come out with a new book that should inspire lots of conversation among the mom and dad set in Park Slope.

In "Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers – and How You Can Too" (Berkley),  Dr. Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Kim, two Korean-American sisters, advise parents who want
successful children to raise them just as their parents did – in strict
households in which parents spend hours every day educating their
children, where access to pop culture is limited, and where children
are taught that their failures reflect poorly on the family.

This approach is common in Asian countries and among many
immigrant groups in the United States. "It runs counter to an American
culture that celebrates if not venerates self-expression and the
freedom of youth. (This is, after all, the country that invented the
teenager." writes the New York Times.

The sisters note that students
of Asian descent make up about 25 percent of undergraduates at top
universities like Stanford and Penn (and 41 percent at the University
of California, Berkeley), even though Asians are less than 4 percent of
the population, and that as of 2002 Asian-Americans had a median
household income about $10,000 higher than the national average.