Who Belongs Here?: An American Story (2nd Edition) by Margy Burns Knight and Anne Sibley O’Brien (Illustrator)

The cover illustration of this book is not particularly strong, but the good news is it’s not representative of the beautiful illustrations within.

Originally published in 2003 (in the wake of our then-national nightmare), Who Belongs Here? was reprinted in June of this year, and proves itself even more relevant and potent today. One may wince at the degradation the young Cambodian immigrant faces in the great melting pot, but surely we can all connect with a character who is misunderstood and pre-judged, and find strength in his experience.

Since the book proposes that readers think what  “going back where you came from” might actually look like, I need to send this to some of my own contemporaries, the ones who, like me, had immigrant parents or grandparents, and seem to have forgotten their struggles in the American experiment. While pre-readers and young readers may not be able to absorb the non-fiction information about immigration that parallels the story of the young refugee, grown readers ought to be able to!