Honeysuckle House

By Cheng, Andrea

Publishers Summary:
Alienation, longing, prejudice, and cultural difference is touched on in this immigrant story told in the voices of two ten-year-old girls. Sarah and Tina are fourth graders. The most important thing in the world to Sarah - American-born Chinese - is the recent departure of her best friend, Victoria. She misses her terribly. Tina has just recently moved to Cincinnati from Shanghai, and is trying to make sense of a whole new world - pretty much clueless to all the things Sarah is hip to. The two girls are paired together in school, as if Asian appearance were proof of parallel lives and experience. ("I don't speak Chinese," Sarah keeps having to explain.) It's the daily, common stuff of childhood intrigue that finally manages to connect their stories and forge a friendship. A whole constellation of adult concerns swirl around them - green card worries, assimilation, absent fathers, family tensions - but Andrea Cheng remains true to the heart and voice and vision of two ten-year-old girls, in a story which blends tears and games, drama and play.

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ISBN
978-1-88691-099-7
Publisher
Front Street


REVIEWS

School Library Journal

Reviewed on June 1, 2004

Gr 3-5 The honeysuckle house (a spot under a large honeysuckle bush) is where fourth-grader Sarah, a Chinese-American girl, plays with her friend Victoria until the girl suddenly moves away. Sarah's story is juxtaposed with her classmate Ting's, a new immigrant from China. Told in first person in alternating chapters, the narratives balance well between lar...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Horn Book Magazine

Reviewed on July 1, 2004

When Chinese-American Sarah's fourth-grade teacher assigns her to befriend Tina, newly arrived in Cincinnati from China, Sarah resents the assumption that a similar heritage will make them friends. Indeed, the girls' alternating narratives dramatize how different their concerns are. Sarah is bereft at the abrupt moving-away of her friend Victoria and at odds with her parents (she resents Dad's business travel, while Mom's new st...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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