Well, I read Three Keys
Front Desk was a great, fairly typical historical novel about immigrants. (Middle grade.) It's based on the author's story, and ended on a great upbeat note - the immigrants, with their can-do spirit and work ethic, manage to buy the exploitative and badly run motel from the previous owner and reopen it as a more or less worker-owned cooperative. The previous owner's son starts acting like a real person. Our protagonist resolves to become a writer, even if English isn't her first language.
The sequel is set the next school year and is based on the author's experience of living in California when notoriously racist Prop 187 passed. She wrote it as Trump's 2016 campaign was gaining speed. She cares deeply, I presume, about children being separated from their parents. Her afterword is heavily footnoted.
It's... it's a bit of a tough read, is what I'm saying, and the happy ending has a few asterisks in it. (As she remarks in the footnote, even that dubiously happy ending is a lot less likely nowadays.) You may want to pre-read it before handing it off to a sensitive kiddo.
(Also, I know this is a feel-good moment, but I am intensely skeptical that her heavily racist teacher, who spent an entire class period on the first day telling the kids that race isn't real therefore Prop 187 couldn't be racist, omg, would have such a quick and complete turnaround. If this is based on the author's actual teacher that year, okay, I guess that's that... but....)
The sequel is set the next school year and is based on the author's experience of living in California when notoriously racist Prop 187 passed. She wrote it as Trump's 2016 campaign was gaining speed. She cares deeply, I presume, about children being separated from their parents. Her afterword is heavily footnoted.
It's... it's a bit of a tough read, is what I'm saying, and the happy ending has a few asterisks in it. (As she remarks in the footnote, even that dubiously happy ending is a lot less likely nowadays.) You may want to pre-read it before handing it off to a sensitive kiddo.
(Also, I know this is a feel-good moment, but I am intensely skeptical that her heavily racist teacher, who spent an entire class period on the first day telling the kids that race isn't real therefore Prop 187 couldn't be racist, omg, would have such a quick and complete turnaround. If this is based on the author's actual teacher that year, okay, I guess that's that... but....)