Listen, Slowly
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This remarkable and bestselling novel from Thanhha Lai, author of the National Book Award–winning and Newbery Honor Book Inside Out & Back Again, follows a young girl as she learns the true meaning of family.
Listen, Slowly is a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year!
A California girl born and raised, Mai can’t wait to spend her vacation at the beach. Instead, she has to travel to Vietnam with her grandmother, who is going back to find out what really happened to her husband during the Vietnam War.
Mai’s parents think this trip will be a great opportunity for their out-of-touch daughter to learn more about her culture. But to Mai, those are their roots, not her own. Vietnam is hot, smelly, and the last place she wants to be. Besides barely speaking the language, she doesn’t know the geography, the local customs, or even her distant relatives. To survive her trip, Mai must find a balance between her two completely different worlds.
Perfect for fans of Rita Williams-Garcia and Linda Sue Park, Listen, Slowly is an irresistibly charming and emotionally poignant tale about a girl who discovers that home and culture, family and friends, can all mean different things.
Can Mai find a way to honor her family’s past while forging a future that’s all her own?
A Heartfelt Grandmother-Granddaughter Story: Mai thinks she’s just a reluctant tour guide for her grandmother, but she is soon pulled into Bà’s emotional quest for closure.A Hilarious Fish-Out-of-Water Adventure: From the sweltering heat to mysterious food and a language she barely speaks, Mai navigates the challenges of a country that feels a world away from her California home.A Search for Family History: Uncover a mystery from the Vietnam War as Mai helps her grandmother find answers about the grandfather she never knew.A Powerful Story of Identity: A trip that begins as a chore becomes a profound exploration of what it means to balance two cultures and find where you truly belong.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
All high-achieving 12-year-old Mai wants is to hang out at home in Laguna Beach with her best friend and her crush-that-shall-not-be-named: "This is the summer I've been waiting for my whole life," she explains. Instead, she is forced to accompany her father and her grandmother (B ) to Vietnam to determine whether her grandfather ( ng) might still be alive. (He disappeared during "THE WAR," as Mai thinks of it, and has long been presumed dead.) Mai's self-interested annoyance gives way to fascination as she becomes swept up in her Vietnamese heritage, helps find out what happened to ng, befriends a headstrong girl named t, and enjoys a deepening relationship with B . As she did in her National Book Award winning Inside Out & Back Again, Lai offers a memorable heroine and cultural journey ones that are clever near-opposites of those in that book, as Lai trades verse for prose and an immigrant's story for one of a girl fully immersed in American culture. The story capably stands on its own, yet considered alongside Inside Out, it's all the more rewarding. Ages 8 12.
