Dumpling Days

I borrowed this from a coworker who's using it in a middle grade English class. It's a cute story of a Taiwanese-American girl traveling to Taiwan for the first time. It's pretty simplistic, even for middle grade fiction, but what I absolutely loved about it was the depiction of Taiwan. I'd love for......more

I have to admit that I might have a deeper resonance to the themes in this book than most, considering the fact that I'm Korean American and was raised in the Midwest. I look Asian on the outside but my cultural connection is to my white parents, I've been to Korea and I felt super American. Where d......more

A twinkie. That's how people describe Grace Pacy Lin. White on the inside, but yellow on the outside. "Wo shi mei guo ren, (I am American) mei guo ren!" Pacy would say. "Wo bu hui han yu (I don't know Chinese), bu hui han yu!" During summer break, Pacy travels to Taiwan with her family, a completely......more

Have you ever been forced to go on a family trip? Sometimes they can be fun, like a trip to Disneyland, but sometimes you'd rather just stay home. That's how Pacy feels about her family's trip to Taiwan. To her mom and dad it's a trip to their homeland, but Pacy's home is back in America. And the wo......more

This one falls outside of my normal reading habits; while I’ve developed a bit of a weakness for teen lit/YA/whatever you want to call it, I don’t typically delve into middle-grade fiction now that I’m so far beyond my middle grades. I picked up an ARC of this because it looked cute, though, and it......more