A Step from Heaven (2003)

This is an award winning story of a young girl whose family moves from Korea to the United States when she was 4 years old. Her family suffers a lot of stress because of their financial situation which contributes to her father's alcoholism and abuse of his wife. Regardless, Young Ju attends school and learns everything from scratch like what Crayons are for and how to speak English. By the time she completes ninth grade, she has the best grades of her class. She makes friend with an American girl and truly becomes American from her example (luckily a good one). There are many examples of the particular experiences of immigrant children like helping their parents deal with authority figures. She feels she has to lie to keep her American friends from meeting her Korean family and keeping her Korean family from learning what she is doing with her American friends. I think teens who have immigrant families would relate to this girl and find hope and joy in her success.
My rating for this book: +++