Making Connections

For our upcoming book festival, two students will be demonstrating origami techniques. They acquired permission from their parents to stay after school to teach others how to make a simple project.

One student came to tell me about her parents' agreement to letting her do this. The two of us connected last year when she asked me if we had any Vietnamese books in our library. We found non-fiction books about the country but only a few novels and picture books.

She was delighted to pronounce words for me from The Lotus Seed by Sherry Garland. She checked out Carolyn Marsden's When Heaven Fell. Her desire for tales from her native land led me to Sherry Garland's collection Children of the Dragon: Selected Tales From Vietnam. When it arrived, we sat together to look at Trina Schart Hyman's beautiful illustrations and to talk about the stories she remembered.

When she stopped by this week, I had a new book on my desk - Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai. It is a wonderfully told story in verse about one family's departure from Saigon in 1975 through the eyes of a ten-year-old narrator, Kim Ha. Gleefully, she pronounced names and words for me, bringing her culture to my life. She will be the first person to check out this story when it arrives in our library collection.