I am glad our elementary school district has books like this in its curriculum. It wasn’t the most engaging middle grades book I have read about dealing with racism but it was a fast read. I think what I was missing was more differentiation between Chris’ and Karina’s voices - but maybe it was intentional in that we are all more alike than different.

Unfortunately as we were reading it there were true stories in the news of real life attacks on Asian Americans so it was clearly a realistic story - and by reading this together it then gave us some shared language to discuss the real life attacks.

The Gen-Xer in me did really enjoy that Karina did not magically get into the art show when she missed the deadline. (What does that say about me?!)

Merged review:

I am glad our elementary school district has books like this in its curriculum. It wasn’t the most engaging middle grades book I have read about dealing with racism but it was a fast read. I think what I was missing was more differentiation between Chris’ and Karina’s voices - but maybe it was intentional in that we are all more alike than different.

Unfortunately as we were reading it there were true stories in the news of real life attacks on Asian Americans so it was clearly a realistic story - and by reading this together it then gave us some shared language to discuss the real life attacks.

The Gen-Xer in me did really enjoy that Karina did not magically get into the art show when she missed the deadline. (What does that say about me?!)