From the Bookshelf of MCLS Reading Challenge…
Find A Copy At
Group Discussions About This Book
No group discussions for this book yet.
What Members Thought
Thanhha Lai. Inside Out & Back Again. Narrated by Doan Ly. 2 CDs. 2.5 hours. Recorded Books 2012. 978-1-4640-2088-9.
Ten-year-old Hà is the voice of experience in this beautifully constructed account of 1975 Saigon, escape by sea, a refugee camp in Guam and re-settlement in Alabama. Thirty-eight poems move the story forward and concisely focus on universal themes of love, loss, grief, sibling rivalry, bullying and more. The author Thanhha Lai has said she’s lived with this story for fifteen years ...more
Ten-year-old Hà is the voice of experience in this beautifully constructed account of 1975 Saigon, escape by sea, a refugee camp in Guam and re-settlement in Alabama. Thirty-eight poems move the story forward and concisely focus on universal themes of love, loss, grief, sibling rivalry, bullying and more. The author Thanhha Lai has said she’s lived with this story for fifteen years ...more
This book was a lovely find. I picked it somewhat randomly to fit some Reading Challenge categories for 2 different groups, and was a bit skeptical about whether or not I would enjoy it. I ended up flying through it in 1 day, but I don't feel like that diminished its beauty or impact in anyway. The free verse poetry writing style made it a very quick read, in addition to the fact that I was hungry to learn more of Ha's story as she and her family escaped from war-torn Vietnam facing an uncertain
...more
I really enjoyed this book, because it introduces a perspective that I think we often overlook: what a refugee feels & sees. Lai's book reveals what one girl feels and experiences as she tries to learn a new way of living in America, after the Vietnam war. This is a very germane to today's debate & fear of refugees. We focus so often on how refugees could be "terrorists" or how are they going to "integrate" that we forget how the refugees are feeling. Lai's narrator explains and really helps teh
...more
May 05, 2016
Anne
marked it as to-read
