Inside Out and Back Again / Thanhha Lai / 261 pages

This juvenile fiction book is really good and quite unusual.  It looks like it will be some sort of verse, but it is just sentences going down the page that don't look like much, but tell the entire story incredibly well.  It would be great for those who have difficulty reading.  The story, however, needs some knowledge of the Vietnam war on the part of the reader.  Elementary children today probably know nothing about a war that only their grandfathers could have been in.  I would love to see this in middle school for history class.  It's not just the actual history.  It  is also how the family adjusts to the new life in the United States and the prejudice that they encounter.  The story is from the point of view of a ten year old girl (the author) who escapes Vietnam as a boat person and is re-located to Alabama.  The culture shock is quite large.  This is a Newberry honor book and National Book award winner.  Rightly so.