From the Tops of the Trees

Gr 1-3–In this moving, positive story, a father encourages his young daughter to confront challenges and look beyond borders. In Wada’s scenes, no Hmong refugee appears skeletal, but the “Humane Deterrence Policy” of the camp in Thailand, in 1985, includes just three days’ worth of food a week. Kids play happily together, ride dogs and chase chickens; the aunties of the extended families embroider calmly; but soldiers appear as splotchy memory-shadows, behind pretty blue-green foreground leaves. Kalia has overheard talk about the war and adults’ fears, and asks, “Is all the world a refugee camp?” Then, from a treetop, her father changes her perspective, assuring her she’ll “travel far to find peace.” Autobiographically based, like Yang’s The Most Beautiful Thing, this book includes an account of the writer’s successful subsequent life, pronunciation help, and a map. Wada seamlessly mixes media (graphite, watercolor, digital) in subdued hues into a simple, sensitive child’s-eye depiction of the camp and its people, scaled for reading to a group.