Andrea Cheng (1957–2015)

Alienation, longing, prejudice, and cultural difference is touched on in this immigrant story told in the voices of two ten-year-old girls. Sarah and Tina are fourth graders. The most important thing in the world to Sarah — American-born Chinese — is the recent departure of her best friend, Victoria. She misses her terribly. Tina has just recently moved to Cincinnati from Shanghai, and is trying to make sense of a whole new world — pretty much clueless to all the things Sarah is hip show more to.
The two girls are paired together in school, as if Asian appearance were proof of parallel lives and experience. ("I don't speak Chinese," Sarah keeps having to explain.) It's the daily, common stuff of childhood intrigue that finally manages to connect their stories and forge a friendship. A whole constellation of adult concerns swirl around them — green card worries, assimilation, absent fathers, family tensions — but Andrea Cheng remains true to the heart and voice and vision of two ten-year-old girls, in a story which blends tears and games, drama and play. show less

4th grader Anna Wang is often reading a book. She likes them, but it's also an escape from complicated friendship dynamics. What I particularly like about this book is that Anna doesn't jump at befriending another girl when she gets the chance -- she takes her time and the friendship grows based on real connections. Her immigrant parents work very hard, but still make space for Laura (the new friend) to have a safe place to be as her parents separate and her father becomes threatening. There show more are lots of kind adults in Anna's life as well -- Mr. Shepherd, who struggles with asking for help getting in and out of his wheelchair since his wife passed away, Ray, the crossing guard, who checks in with her every day, Teacher Zhen at Chinese school and Ms. Simmons in her classroom. The book has a quiet energy to it -- many things happen day to day, and Anna reads many excellent books and altogether it's just a really nice book in itself. Like a slighly less zany Ramona with craft projects and reading. show less

Fourth grader Anna Chang loves reading so much that she’s often caught with her nose in a book, whether that’s in the classroom, at recess, on the bus, or even when walking! But as the school year progresses from fall to spring, she learns that some of the best memories are made in the here and now, with family and friends by her side.

This is a sweet book about the everyday adventures of childhood, from creating a homemade Halloween costume to sewing lunch bags from donated fabric scraps show more to making paper airplanes and taking them for a spin. Although a few heavier topics come up (such as some casual racism and a divorce that is far from amicable), the book remains optimistic overall.

Anna and her family are endearing, as are the myriad of folks in their lives from a caring teacher to a chatty crossing guard to an elderly neighbors with a penchant for giving away things he's no longer using. I could easily see why readers would want to progress on to the rest of the series to spend more time with these characters.

There is a great deal of diversity in the book; Anna's family is of Chinese descent, with her mother being an immigrant; her mother is also a nontraditional college student; there is the friend whose parents are going through a divorce; there's use of wheelchairs for both temporary and permanent disabilities; and so on.

This book is perfect for fans of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona series, especially if readers are ready to move on to a slightly older protagonist but not quite ready for the darker "problem novel" titles that pepper middle grade literature. show less

The Year of the Baby by Andrea Chang, illustrated by Patricia Barton. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. 162 pp. 978-0-547-91067-3. Middle and upper elementary.
Fourth grade Anna’s life is busy: she is happy with school and her upcoming science project, and she loves her newly adopted baby sister Kaylee. But, everyone in her family is concerned when Kaylee stops gaining weight and doesn’t want to eat. Anna teams up with her friends to create a science project to help Kaylee eat and show more thrive. This short chapter book is a surprisingly nuanced: Anna’s mother is from China, and Kaylee herself is very aware of the perceptions that go with being, as she calls herself, ABC- American Born Chinese. Particularly effective is the way that Chang highlights the assumptions that even friends can make based on race and ethnicity. She also does an excellent job presenting the issue of Kaylee’s adoption from China, with both the happiness of Anna and her family in having a baby sister and their remaining questions about her birth family, and Kaylee’s physical transition to the United States. Elementary school friendships and the suggestion of cliques is touched on briefly. However, Chang’s approach to these issues is not heavy-handed and a wide variety of readers would enjoy this book, particularly if they, like Anna, would be thrilled to find themselves in the main characters. Highly recommended. show less