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What Members Thought
This was really charming, and would be a perfect introduction to modern Viet Nam for tween readers. Mai is your stereotypical American girl, sassy and wrapped up in her personal dramas at first, but also a dedicated daughter and grand daughter. There’s a lot of food mentioned - Mai is almost always either eating or hungry or sick. (CW the cover art depicts a scene right before Mai stupidly falls into a pond and ends up with a parasite infection from the water AND a nasty huge leech on her leg an
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Mia, or Mai (as her Vietnamese relatives know her), thinks of herself as a California girl through and through. She has big plans for the summer to hang out on the beach with her friend Montana and maybe even catch the attention of a boy who she's crushing on. All of those plans go out the window when Mia finds out she has to accompany her father and grandmother to Vietnam as they search for information about her grandfather, last seen during the Vietnam War. She is not happy to have her summer
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Solid. Loved so many aspects - friendship, how foreign a concept can be in a different language (no way to easily understand the importance of the transition to teenager in Vietnamese bc of how the numbers go, no big chinage from twelve to thirteen), family, longing, rules, understanding more Vietnamese than she can speak at first, the way a teen can really begrudge a thing outside of her plan, how lovely grandmothers can be, how much can fit on a moped, mosquitoes and ways to deal with them, th
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Dec 15, 2015
Curlysue
marked it as to-read
Jan 17, 2016
Jocelyn
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Mar 31, 2018
Jody Rowan
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Jul 30, 2018
Ching-In
is currently reading it
Oct 04, 2018
Nancy H
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Oct 07, 2019
Tammy Grimm
marked it as to-read
