A DREAM TRIP TO AMERICA TURNS INTO A NIGHTMARE!
From New York Times bestselling comic artist Betty C. Tang comes a funny, fast-paced, and heartrending story about three siblings living on their own as undocumented new immigrants, inspired by the author’s own childhood as a parachute kid. Perfect for fans of New Kid and Front Desk.
Feng-Li can’t wait to discover America with her family! But after an action-packed vacation, her parents deliver shocking news: They are returning to Taiwan and leaving Feng-Li and her older siblings in California on their own.
Suddenly, the three kids must fend for themselves in a strange new world―and get along. Starting a new school, learning a new language, and trying to make new friends while managing a household is hard enough, but Bro and Sis’s constant bickering makes everything worse. Thankfully, there are some hilarious moments to balance the stress and loneliness. But as tensions escalate―and all three kids get tangled in a web of bad choices―can Feng-Li keep her family together?---from the publisher
288 pages 978-1338832686 Ages 9-12
Keywords: graphic novel, immigrants, humor, siblings, new experiences, fitting in, Asian and Asian American, social situations, 9 year old, 10 year old, 11 year old, 12 year old
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“When leaders call COVID-19 the ‘China virus,’ it harkens back to decades of state-sanctioned discrimination against Asian Americans.”
– National Geographic (2020)
“The sun'll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar, that tomorrow there'll be sun
Just thinking about tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs, and the sorrow 'til there's none”
– from Annie (1982) (the year after PARACHUTE KIDS begins)
“Tomorrow will be better”
– Fortune cookie fortune that Feng-Li tapes to her new bedroom wall.
“The term parachute kids refers to children from Asia who have been ‘dropped off’ with friends or relatives in foreign countries while their parents stayed behind. The practice has been ongoing for decades and continues today…PARACHUTE KIDS is not a memoir, but a mixture of fiction, my family’s first experiences in America, and anecdotes of immigrant friends I met along the way.”
– from the Author’s Note
“[Mom] [‘I’m afraid I have bad news. I couldn’t get my visa extended.’]
[Sis] [‘Visa?’]
[Mom] [‘Yes, remember we were only granted a 30-day tourist visa? It expires next week. Ba and I want you kids to remain. But if I overstay my visa, I’ll never be able to return. Which means I must leave the country.’]
[Feng-Li] [‘Mama, no!’]
[Sis] [‘For how long?’]
[Bro] [‘Take me with you!’]
[Mom] [‘You won’t be completely alone. The Tians have agreed to help.’You’ll be in charge, Jia-Xi. But I’ll make a list of responsibilities for each of you.]
It’s tough enough being a grown-up and not always having your parents around to comfort you, sort things out, and set them straight. Imagine being a kid forced to live a world apart from Mom and Dad. That’s the turn life suddenly takes for Feng-Li, her big brother Ke-Gāng, and their big sister Jia-Xi. (The three siblings respectively adopt the American names Ann, Jason, and Jessie.)
The Lin kids are from Taiwan. Their parents want them to have the supposed advantages of America, and to be away from the political tensions then building between China and Taiwan. But, thanks to visa issues, it turns out that the only way the parents can make this happen, is to leave the three kids at home, alone, in California, with some nearby friends sort-of keeping an eye on them. That is, until the friends unexpectedly need to depart California for life on the East Coast. This, while the three siblings struggle to learn English.
The sparkly promise of Disneyland radically changes when the trio finds they are going to essentially be on their own in the U.S. And it only seems to go downhill from there.
In a terrifying series of missteps, each of the siblings, in turn, ends up in deep trouble. Have their parents, desperate in their desire to benefit the children, made a really big mistake?
With many of the characters in PARACHUTE KIDS speaking two languages, the author/illustrator needs to differentiate between when a character is actually speaking English and when what is being said is being translated into English. The device employed here, in order to differentiate between the two, is that words/sentences spoken in English are in black text, while words spoken/written in Chinese are in red.
I believe that, while there has always been xenophobia and racism, an unfortunate result of world population tripling over my 68 years has been a mainstreaming of anti-immigrant scapegoating. In today’s world, a classroom discussion of this book will, in too many cases, elicit harsh criticisms picked up from parents and right-wing media, about the need for building walls and worse.
Sadly, true-to-life storytelling in today’s world, involving such a scenario as is depicted here, includes name-calling, mocking imitations of speaking Chinese, and physical confrontations. Hopefully, PARACHUTE KIDS will lead to audiences gaining empathy from the story of the three siblings (with their universally-recognized episodes of sibling rivalry, making friends, and falling for someone). Hopefully, young readers will become less apt to employ the cruel, unfeeling behaviors depicted here when they next encounter immigrants and/or hear foreign languages spoken in America.
Powerful, gripping, and thought-provoking, PARACHUTE KIDS will readily engage middle grade and middle school readers.
Recommended by: Richie Partington, MLIS, California USA
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