Middle-Grade Review: Parachute Kids

One of my choices for Middle-Grade March and Fierce Women Reads was Parachute Kids by Betty C. Tang. I'd heard a lot about this middle-grade graphic novel, and it lived up to my expectations. The novel was informative, engrossing, and entertaining.

Ten-year-old Feng-Li and her family are traveling from Taiwan to California for a family vacation in 1981. She's very excited and has been poring over guidebooks, picking out all the sites she wants to see. Her parents, older brother and sister, and she do have a nice week-long vacation. But then their parents break the news: the kids will be staying in America to get away from the volatile situation at home and to get a better education. Dad is returning home to go back to work, so he can support the family, and Mom plans to stay with the kids, in the house they bought. The kids all choose American first names because their Taiwanese names are too difficult for Americans to pronounce. After a month, though, mom has to return to Taiwan, too, when the U.S. won't extend her visa. There are good family friends from Taiwan who live in the same town with their daughter, Olivia, having immigrated a few years earlier. For the most part, though, sixteen-year-old Jessie, fourteen-year-old Jason, and Feng-Li with her new name, Ann, are on their own. They all have major challenges. Jessie knows English the best of the three, but she's the closest to college age and must be ready to take the SAT in less than a year. Jason has a secret and got in a lot of trouble in Taiwan; the only kids who talk to him at school are a group of Chinese boys (other parachute kids) who probably aren't the best influence. And poor Ann jumps into fifth grade without knowing a single word of English. She misses her friends and her old school, where she was a good student. At the same time, they have to manage a household, take care of the house, and get along with each other! They each make some mistakes and bad choices along the way, and Ann feels like it's up to her to keep her family together.

There is so much depth and complexity in this graphic novel! The issues these three kids are dealing with are huge, including some very adult issues. Their parents didn't abandon them, and both are trying to get new visas to come back, but the process takes a long time. I had never heard the term "parachute kids" before, but apparently, it's a fairly common experience (and one that has grown exponentially in the last decade) for Chinese parents to send their kids to the U.S. for a better education. Often, they have a host family to stay with or live in dormitories at private schools, but sometimes kids like the Lins must fend for themselves. I found news articles on the phenomenon in a Palo Alto high school newspaper and the New York Times. The novel provided an inside view to what it is like for these kids, living without their parents and trying to assimilate into American life. And it showed the language barrier by using yellow dialogue bubbles for Taiwanese and white for English. The author explains in a note at the end that she and her siblings were parachute kids in 1979, and her deep understanding of the challenges is evident. Despite the often harrowing subject matter, the novel is also entertaining, with a great sense of humor, and illustrates the love the siblings have for each other (behind the typical bickering!). I enjoyed reading it very much, and I feel like I better understand how difficult it is for kids like these.

(Note: the novel is written from Feng-Li's perspective, which is why it's middle-grade, but the teens' struggles are addressed as well, so it might appeal to older readers, too.) 

283 pages, Graphix (imprint of Scholastic)

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Reading Challenge

Alphabet Soup Challenge - P

Diversity Challenge & mini-challenge for March: #ownvoices

Literary Escapes Challenge - California

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. This sample is a note from the beginning, explaining about the Taiwanese language and accents in the audio.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too). This sample is from the main part of the book, so it shows the different voices and accents, along with sound effects. I wouldn't normally recommend an audio of a graphic novel, but this one might be an exception to better understand the language barrier.

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

  
  

Movie Monday: American Fiction

Looking for a movie to watch Saturday night, I went through the list of Oscar Best Picture nominees, and we chose American Fiction. I'd heard great things about it, and my husband trusted me (well, that, and the 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and 96% audience score!). We both enjoyed this warm, thoughtful, entertaining movie about books, writing, and the publishing industry.

Thelonius "Monk" Ellison (yeah, it's a mouthful--that's why he goes by Monk), played by Jeffrey Wright, teaches disinterested college students about literature and writing and has published several literary fiction novels. He's a smart, well-educated man and his books have been critically acclaimed, but they don't sell well. When Monk participates in a literary festival, his session is poorly attended, so he goes down the hall to see where everyone is. A packed room is listening raptly to a well-spoken Black female author, played by Issa Rae. Her widely popular novel, We's Lives in the Ghetto, of which she reads an excerpt, represents everything Monk feels is wrong with the publishing industry. It relies on Black stereotypes: rapping, trash-talking Black characters dealing with teen pregnancy, jail, and deadbeat dads. Monk is disgusted, but when he's got writer's block while working on his latest novel, he writes his own "real Black experience" novel as a joke. His editor is shocked when he sends it out, and Monk is offered the highest advance he's ever gotten (by a long shot) from a major publisher. As disgusted as Monk is with the whole thing, he desperately needs money. His sister, played by Tracee Ellis Ross, and brother, played by Sterling K. Brown, are both broke after painful divorces, and his mother has dementia and clearly needs 24-hour care. Needing to care for her, he publishes the book under a pseudonym, and the movie rights are quickly sold for an astronomical sum. Struggling with family issues and wanting to get closer to a woman he's been dating named Coraline, played by Erika Alexander, Monk is conflicted but goes forward. As you might expect, things get really complicated (and hilarious).

This is a very funny movie, but it's smart humor with a hefty dose of irony that the audience is in on. It's also poignant and heartwarming. While it is clearly skewering the publishing industry (and some readers), it's also a deeply-felt, moving story about family. And of course, it is a thoughtful, original approach to thinking about race and biases in our society. It won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (it's based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett), and it's clear why: the writing is outstanding. That, combined with excellent performances by its A-list stars, makes this movie an absolute winner. My husband and I both loved it and laughed all the way through.

It is streaming on MGM (I didn't even know they had a streaming service). It is also available to rent for $3.99 on Amazon and on other outlets, like YouTube, Apple, and Roku.

I'm including a "clean" trailer below, which showcases the humor of the movie, but the trailer with the swearing in it is even more funny and highlights the roles of Ross (as his sister) and Brown (as his brother).

It's Monday 3/25! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

I had another very busy week without enough writing time and three appointments, so I was out almost every day--making up for lost time, I guess! I'm still feeling good, but if I could just get rid of that necessary, pesky afternoon nap, I could get a lot more done! I did enjoy a few short walks last week, though we had some cold, rainy days. I'm planning to get back out to the garden for more clean-up today.

A sure sign of spring: skunk cabbage in the low areas!

Saturday's heavy rains cleared out, leaving pastel skies & a full moon

The big news at our house is that a crew arrived this morning to paint our entryway, after only 29 years in this house! It's long overdue. We needed a professional team because it's a huge area, with a cathedral ceiling, so it's almost 3 stories up. It's an open floor-plan, so the entryway leads up the stairs and along the second-floor hallway--a big area. Since it's the entryway, we didn't have much furniture to move, except for this bookcase:

I'm sure you can see our problem--clearly, we need a bigger bookcase! Here's where all the books are for now:

 

Piles of books on the floor

Extra bookcase moved into our room

Lots of our "keeper" books stored in a laundry basket!

My bigger plan is to take advantage of this to do some book reorganizing (and weeding): clearing off our big living room bookcase (that I record in front of for my book videos) to make room for some of the books we just moved out of the hallway (that was our "Keepers" bookcase, with our favorite books). And I want to move some of what was in the living room--like cookbooks--into the office. So, yesterday, we took the first step and cleared off two shelves in our home office. One (with the blue binders) was from my old professional (pre-illness) life: lots of training courses that I designed, taught to our instructors, and instructed myself. I loved my training & consulting work, so this was bittersweet! I always thought I'd get back to it. But many of those binders were full of transparencies, so ... yeah, a little out of date! The second shelf was full of software--from the 1990's and early 2000's. A lot went out into the trash and recycling yesterday. Feels good to see those almost-empty shelves! This is another outcome of feeling better--finally being able to tackle some decluttering and home projects.

20+ year-old stuff!

Clear bookshelves! (the red binder is actually recipes)

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On the Blog

Fiction Review: Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane - a moving multi-generational family drama about life: love and loss, trauma and healing. Really outstanding novel!

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On Video

I'm So Annoyed Booktube Tag - I wasn't sure about doing this one, but it ended up being a lot of fun! It's about the (big and little) annoyances in the book world. What are your bookish pet peeves?

Friday Reads 3-22-24 - my brief weekly update of what I am reading & listening to

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 What We're Reading

I finished the middle-grade graphic novel, Parachute Kids by Betty C. Tang for Middle-Grade March. It's about a family from Taiwan that visits California on a vacation, but the parents' plan is for their kids to remain in the U.S. to escape the perilous situation at home and to get a better education. Dad returns home to work, and Mom is supposed to stay with the kids, but the U.S. won't extend her visa. The three kids (two teens and 10-year-old Feng Li) are left on their own. The oldest daughter knows English fairly well, but the 10-year-old knows none and is suddenly in school with American kids. I had never even heard of this term before this book came out, but apparently it is a growing trend for Chinese parents to send their kids to the U.S. for a better education. I wanted to know more and read this fascinating NY Times article. The graphic novel was excellent and both entertaining and informative.

 

Next, I moved onto my second book for Booktopia (tickets available; my recap/vlog from Booktopia 2023), The Audacity by Ryan Chapman. This novel is a satire that loosely mirrors the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos case. Guy, a middling piano composer, is married to Victoria, a hard-driving, high-intensity woman who started PrevYou, a medical company whose simple aim was to cure cancer. Guy comes home from yet another charity gala (he runs the company's philanthropic arm) to an emergency board meeting on Zoom where he hears that Victoria is missing. She went kayaking in San Francisco Bay and her kayak came back without her. Guy quickly figures out that this was her way of disappearing since news of her company's failure was about to break (and we hear from Victoria, in a secluded cabin, in chapter 2). The beginning was a bit confusing, but at about 50% now, there is a lot more humor, and the satire is more apparent.

 

For Middle-Grade March and Fierce Women Reads, I finished listening to Dear Sweet Pea by Julie Murphy, my first novel from this very popular YA author (this is her first middle-grade novel). Twelve-year-old Sweet Pea feels torn apart by her parents' divorce, despite their efforts to keep everything "normal." She splits her time between her mom's house and her dad's, which are identical homes two doors down from each other! She's also still grieving the loss of her first-ever best friend, Kiera, who's found prettier, thinner, more popular girls to hang out with. Luckily, Sweet Pea has Oscar, her new best (only) friend and her cat, Cheese. It was very good, focusing on several common adolescent issues between Sweet Pea, Kiera, and Oscar with warmth and humor.

 

My last audiobook for Middle-Grade March and Fierce Women Reads is Home Away from Home by Cynthia Lord. Mia and her mom always visit her grandma in Maine every summer, but this year, Mia's there alone. Her mom and her boyfriend are working to sell their old house and find a new one, for "a fresh start." Mia wishes everything would stay the same, but she loves visiting her grandma in the small, seaside town. Things are different there this year, though, too. Mia meets grandma's neighbor, Cayman, who's her age and seems to have made himself at home at grandma's house! The two kids spot an unusual white bird of prey when they go to check on the baby eaglets the town is known for. It's great so far, with a hefty dose of nature, which I love.

 

My husband, Ken, is still reading a nonfiction book I loved last November, The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman, about a Polish couple who saved over a hundred Jews in WWII Warsaw (my review at the link). Oddly, he swears he's read it before and knows the whole story. This is odd because I just brought it into the house in summer 2022, and we both agree he didn't read it recently. Besides, I document what he's reading each week here, and it's only mentioned on my blog when I read it last fall. It's a mystery! But it's a wonderful book, so he's still reading it (again?).

 

Our son, 29, is still very busy with job interviews, but he's enjoying a book I gave him for his birthday last year, Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, one of his all-time favorite fantasy authors (and he has many favorites). This is book 1 in World of the First Law, a spin-off of his hugely popular First Law trilogy.

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What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog's page.

 

 

 What are you and your family reading this week?

Fiction Review: Ask Again, Yes

For Big Book Summer last year, I did my first-ever Buddy Read with Nikki, a Booktube friend of mine who had the channel Red Dot Reads (she's on hiatus now). We read The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles together, though we live on opposite sides of the world (she's in Singapore), and we discussed it by leaving each other voicemails. That experience was so wonderful, and we both got so much more out of the novel this way, that we decided to do another Buddy Read. We picked a novel that was on both of our shelves, Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, and once again, our enjoyment of this excellent multi-generational family saga was greatly enhanced by talking about it with each other. 

The novel begins in 1973 with two young Irish-American men, Francis and Brian, training together for the NYPD and then being assigned as partners when they're rookies. Francis had recently immigrated to the U.S. (though he was born there), and Brian was the son of Irish immigrants. Time moves forward, and they each marry: Brian marries Anne, a recent Irish immigrant like Francis, and Francis marries Lena, who comes from a close-knit Polish family. Francis and Lena move to Gillam, a small, rural town outside of the city (but an easy commute on the train). Lena is lonely out there, without her friends and family from the city. In 1975, Lena is nursing their new baby, Natalie, when she sees a moving truck pull up next door. Brian and Anne move in, and Lena hopes she'll finally have a friend, but Anne keeps to herself and seems moody. The years pass, and Francis and Lena have two more girls, Sarah and Kate, while Anne suffers a devastating miscarriage before finally having a boy, Peter. Though Anne disapproves for some reason, Peter and Kate become best friends and grow up together. Then, when they are in eighth grade, something horrible happens that affects every member of both families for decades to come.

All of that happens before page 100 (and I've obviously kept it vague to avoid spoilers). The novel follows Peter and Kate and their parents for thirty years after the devastating, life-changing incident. Keane has carefully crafted each character, and the reader gets different perspectives from each of them. While the characters are very well-developed, there is also a lot that happens in this novel, including some very surprising twists. It's a propulsive, engrossing read. In fact, Nikki and I traded voicemails after each of the three sections of the book, and we were careful not to read ahead so we wouldn't spoil anything for the other. That was very hard to do sometimes, to just stop reading at the end of a section! 

This would be an excellent book group book because there is so much to discuss here, as Nikki and I discovered: trauma and its effects on generations, steps in the healing process and how it's different for everyone, each character's thoughts and actions, plus the beautiful writing in the novel. We each tagged quotes that we shared with each other that revealed basic truths about humanity. I can't share any of them here because they'd reveal too much, and this is a novel you must discover for yourself. The ending was absolutely perfect, with more quote-worthy observations. We agreed that this is a novel about life and all its messiness: joys and sorrows, love and loss, grief and healing. I can't wait to read Keane's next novel, The Half-Moon, and meet the author at Booktopia next month!

388 pages, Scribner

Simon & Schuster Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Alphabet Soup Challenge - A

Diversity Challenge 

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. Sample is from the prologue, about Francis and Brian.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

   
 

It's Monday 3/18! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Life continues to be busy and full, thanks to my greatly improved health! It really is incredible, and I am grateful every day for this amazing turn-around, after ending last year with several months couchbound. My stunning improvement is due to normalizing thyroid function (which took a full year) and finally getting yeast overgrowth (a chronic issue due to my immune disorder) under control with diet changes. So, last week, I went shopping again, both clothes shopping and my first time in Trader Joe's in about six months. I worked out in the yard on three different days, which is a stunning accomplishment for me--the gardens are looking great for spring for the first time in many years! 

 

All the dead stuff cut down - ready for spring!

Buds on my lilac tree!

We went out to a fancy dinner with our oldest friends to celebrate their anniversary. I met two other friends for lunch. The three of us worked together in the early 90's, and I hadn't seen one of them in over 20 years! We had a blast catching up. And yesterday, those same old friends (from the anniversary dinner) came over for our traditional St. Patrick's Day feast, along with our younger son.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

And, of course, as two engineers, we celebrated Pi Day! It was a challenge this year, given our dietary restrictions, but I made a Paleo/keto quiche that was absolutely delicious.

Happy Pi Day!

I'm loving seeing all the signs of spring around me, including my first top-down day of the year!

Daffodils in bloom!

First top-down day!

Pink tree and daffodils

My favorite sign of spring - forsythia!

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On the Blog

I need to step up my review writing this week. Though my new blog policy is only to write reviews of really great books ... it's been an outstanding reading month so far!

Nonfiction Review: The Invisible Girls by Sarah Thebarge - I was so moved by this wonderful memoir about a 27-year-old woman, devastated by breast cancer and other losses, who meets a single-mother Somali refugee with 5 little girls, and how their relationship helped to heal them both. Check out my review and also the 3-minute video at the bottom of Sarah's website for a preview into this heartbreaking, uplifting true story.

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On Video

I don't normally include my chronic illness videos here, but if you yourself have a chronic illness or you are just interested in my current life and what helped me to improve so much, then check out my latest:

Chronic Illness Vlog 3-10-24: Out and About, Still Doing Well!

Friday Reads 3-15-24 - my quick weekly update on what I am currently reading.

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 What We're Reading

I finished reading my first book for Booktopia, the fabulous weekend book event I participate in every spring in Vermont (tickets available; my recap/vlog from Booktopia 2023). I started with Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out by Shannon Reed, a nonfiction book that was absolutely delightful! Reed is not only a reader but also a longtime English teacher and now college literature and writing professor. This is a fun combination of memoir and essays, with a hefty dose of humor, and it's very entertaining. Any avid reader will recognize him/herself in Shannon's many memories and observations, plus it is loaded with book name-dropping!

 

Now, I am reading a middle-grade graphic novel, Parachute Kids by Betty C. Tang for Middle-Grade March (fits the prompt "about immigration"). It's about a family from Taiwan that visits California on a vacation, but the parents' plan is for their kids to remain in the U.S. to escape the perilous situation at home and to get a better education. Dad returns home to work, and Mom is supposed to stay with the kids, but the U.S. won't extend her visa. The three kids (two teens and 10-year-old Feng Li) are left on their own. The oldest daughter knows English fairly well, but the 10-year-old knows none and is suddenly in school with American kids. I had never even heard of this term before this book came out, but apparently it is a growing trend for Chinese parents to send their kids to the U.S. for a better education. I wanted to know more and read this fascinating NY Times article last night. The book is excellent so far. 

 

On audio, I finished listening to Iceberg by Jennifer Nielsen for Middle-Grade March (and for the Fierce Reads event). I'm a longtime fan of Nielsen's middle-grade historical fiction (like Lines of Courage and A Night Divided), and as you might guess from the title, this one is about the Titanic. Twelve-year-old Hazel is on a mission to save her family. Her mother has sent her to the docks to board the Titanic for New York, where Hazel's aunt has promised her a job in a garment factory, so she can send money home to keep her siblings from starving. But when Hazel tries to buy a ticket, she finds that all of her family's savings isn't enough for the fare for even a third-class ticket. She finds a way on board as a stowaway. With a dream of becoming a journalist one day, Hazel begins to hear rumors about the ship that make the reporter in her interested--and wary. We all know how the Titanic's story ends, but this was an excellent novel with a wonderful main character (and yes, she survives).

 

Sticking with the Middle-Grade March and Fierce Women Reads themes, I am now listening to Dear Sweet Pea by Julie Murphy, my first novel from this very popular YA author (this is her first middle-grade novel). Twelve-year-old Sweet Pea feels torn apart by her parents' divorce, despite their efforts to keep everything "normal." She splits her time between her mom's house and her dad's, which are identical homes two doors down from each other! She's also still grieving the loss of her first-ever best friend, Kiera, who's found prettier, thinner, more popular girls to hang out with. Luckily, Sweet Pea has Oscar, her new best (only) friend and her cat, Cheese. The novel is very good so far, and I'm interested to see what happens next.

 

My husband, Ken, finished A Ghost of Caribou by Alice Henderson, book 3 in her outdoor thriller series about wildlife biologist Alex Carter. He is now reading a nonfiction book I loved last November, The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman, about a Polish couple who saved over a hundred Jews in WWII Warsaw. I hope he finds it as engrossing and fascinating as I did (my review at the link).

 

Our son, 29, has been very busy with job interviews lately, but he's enjoying a book I gave him for his birthday last year, Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, one of his all-time favorite fantasy authors (and he has many favorites). This is book 1 in World of the First Law, a spin-off of his hugely popular First Law trilogy.

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What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog's page.

 

 

 What are you and your family reading this week?