Journey Home - Hardcover

McKay, Lawrence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1880000652 ISBN 13: 9781880000656

Publisher: Lee & Low Books, 1998

Synopsis

Excited to be journeying to Vietnam, where she hopes to find the birth family that gave her mother up for adoption, ten-year-old Mai struggles for patience before tracking down an old man who remembers her war-marked family history.

About this title

About the Author

Lawrence McKay, Jr. is the author of CARAVAN, which was a Bank Street College Children's Book of the Year selection. He lives in Vermont with his wife and their two children.

Dom Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. With his unique style of art combining techniques of painting and scratching details in encaustic wax, Lee has illustrated many award-winning picture books for children for LEE & LOW (see full list to the right). He lives with his wife and children in Demarest, New Jersey. To find out more about Dom Lee, visit www.domandk.com

Keunhee Lee is a contributing illustrator for AMERICA: MY LAND, YOUR LAND, OUR LAND. Dom and Keunhee Lee live in Demarest, New Jersey, with their two children.

From Publishers Weekly

In this subdued and affecting story, a woman who was abandoned as an infant at a Saigon orphanage travels from the U.S. back to Vietnam to look for her birth family. Her 10-year-old daughter, Mai, narrates the story as she accompanies her mother. The only clue to the woman's identity is her sole possession at the time of her adoption by an American couple: a delicate, handmade kite. Most of the book follows the woman's involved search and fruitless efforts to discover her roots. But in the book's most childlike moment, Mai wistfully empathizes with her mother, since the girl has never met her own father: "Mom doesn't know where he is, and he's never tried to find me. I don't understand why people can't stay together." Their quest finally leads them to an elderly kite maker who, in an emotional reunion, relates his connection to the woman's parents, killed in a bombing, and how he rescued Mai's motherAand the kite, made by her father. But McKay's (Caravan) pacing is problematic: after the long buildup, this climactic moment gets short shrift. The Lees' (Baseball Saved Us) realistic art, by turns brightly lighted and almost oppressively dark, seamlessly matches the changing moods of the text. Throughout, the artists evoke a clear picture of Vietnam's urban and rural landscapes (in one standout scene, the Lees deftly spotlight mother and daughter in a rickshaw in the midst of the chaotic streets of Shanghai). Uneven tempo aside, this text will engage anyone interested in Vietnam or adoption. Ages 6-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lee & Low Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1880000652
• ISBN 13: 9781880000656
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Lee Dom, Lee Keunhee