Review Detail

Inspired by her love for The Little House on the Prairie books, Linda Sue Park has crafted a another stunning novel. Main character, Hannah, has a white father and a Chinese mother. She is considered a half-Chinese and half-white girl. After her mother’s death Hannah and her father move from California to a Little House–inspired fictional settler town.

Hanna’s mother had been, an aspiring and talented dressmaker and before becoming sick, taught Hannah her skills. Now Hannah and her father seek a fresh start in Dakota Territory. It’s 1880, and they endure challenges similar to those faced by the Ingalls’ family and so many others: dreary travel through unfamiliar lands, the struggle to protect food stores from nature, and the risky uncertainty of establishing a livelihood in a new place.

It was hard to experience the extreme xenophobia of the town’s white residents, which ranges in expression from microaggressions to full-out assault, and Hanna’s fight to overcome it with empathy and dignity. Hannah feels she must take her abuse if she and her father are to have a chance of survival on the frontier.
Do not skip the author’s deeply and personal note about the story’s inspiration.

While I thought the book excellent and meaningful I did not think the cover did justice to what you experience inside. The bonnet Hannah wears on the cover is significant, but Hannah appears a little cartoonish for such a serious and Important subject matter.

Nevertheless, this is another Linda Sue Park home run book.

(Historical fiction. 8-12)