Red, White, and Whole: A Newbery Honor Novel in Verse about an Indian American Girl Navigating Identity and Grief

by Rajani LaRocca

The Color of Virtue

If virtue has a color, it’s an auspicious one. Red. Blood red.

She Blinded Me With Science

The Safety Dance

But If

Then Dr. Andrews says the most beautiful word in the English language: But

Is it hard? I ask. Taking care of patients who are so sick? Yes, she says simply.

Always Something There to Remind Me

Growing up as an immigrant in Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1980s, I felt like a normal American girl . . . but I wasn’t quite a typical American. In my home we ate different food, we sometimes wore different clothes, and we spent our weekends with our Indian community, our second family since our relatives lived half a world away.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, her gorgeous, multigenerational story of immigration and assimilation.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve felt even more contradictions—as a premed government major in college, a working mother, and a doctor who writes books for children.

Philip Amrein, MD, hematologist/oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, answered my questions about AML treatment in the 1980s with extreme thoroughness and patience. Any mistakes I’ve made in the medical aspects of this book are my own.

RAJANI LAROCCA’s debut middle grade novel, Midsummer’s Mayhem, was a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, an Indies Introduce selection, and an Indie Next pick. Rajani was born in India, immigrated to the United States when she was a baby, and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, she practices medicine and lives outside Boston with her family.