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Reviewed by: Ashley Poulin, Elementary School Librarian Title: In the Beautiful Country Author: Jane Kuo Publisher: Quill Tree Books
Year: 2022 Good for Grades: 4-8 Genre/Type of Book: Historical fiction/Novel in verse
Content Warnings, or things that other School Librarians should be aware of: Realistic portrayals of poverty and racism, handled in an age appropriate manner Recommended for a school library: Yes Reason(s) for choosing the book: I chose this book for my library because it depicts the life of an ENL student, and Brooks Hill is the magnet school for elementary ENL programming in Fairport. If you were tasked by the publisher with writing a short quote for the back cover of this book, what would it be: After waiting for years to set foot in the United States, it is not quite The Beautiful Country Ai Shi expected it to be.
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Review:
In the Beautiful Country is about Ai Shi, a 10 year old Taiwanese girl whose father moved to Los Angeles in search of a better life. He had given money to a close friend, with promises of opening a business together, but once he got there, the friend claimed the money was a loan and refused to partner Ai Shi’s father, leading him to buy a corner store with a small kitchen. When Ai Shi and her mother join him in the United States a few months later, nothing is as she imagined it would be. Ai Shi begins to go by Anna and finds that the reality of her family’s cramped apartment and being bullied at school doesn’t live up to what she has heard about the United States - or “the beautiful country” as it was called in Taiwan.
I classified this book as historical fiction, but it takes place not terribly long ago, in the 1980’s. However, the time period is really felt, as many technologies that would make Ai Shi’s life easier, are not present. There is no face time or phone calls to family in Taiwan, just letters. There’s no Google Translate, just a print Chinese-English dictionary. I’m finding that these more recent historical novels are popular with my older students, and I think this one will be as well. The novel in verse format is a nice change of pace as well. I’m focusing a lot on identifying different genres and formats this year, to help students better identify books that they prefer reading, so I think I’m going to use this as an example of the novel in verse format.
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