Inside Out and Back Again
*Starred Review* After her father has been missing in action for nine years during the Vietnam War, 10-year-old H&#xE0; flees with her mother and three older brothers. Traveling first by boat, the family reaches a tent city in Guam, moves on to Florida, and is finally connected with sponsors in Alabama, where H&#xE0; finds refuge but also cruel rejection, especially from mean classmates. Based on Lai&#x2019;s personal experience, this first novel captures a child-refugee&#x2019;s struggle with rare honesty. Written in accessible, short free-verse poems, H&#xE0;&#x2019;s immediate narrative describes her mistakes&#x2014;both humorous and heartbreaking&#x2014;with grammar, customs, and dress (she wears a flannel nightgown to school, for example); and readers will be moved by H&#xE0;&#x2019;s sorrow as they recognize the anguish of being the outcast who spends lunchtime hiding in the bathroom. Eventually, H&#xE0; does get back at the sneering kids who bully her at school, and she finds help adjusting to her new life from a kind teacher who lost a son in Vietnam. The elemental details of H&#xE0;&#x2019;s struggle dramatize a foreigner&#x2019;s experience of alienation. And even as she begins to shape a new life, there is no easy comfort: her father is still gone. Grades 4-8. --Hazel Rochman--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.