It’s been years since I have read aloud to the girls, but I just finished reading a book that I enjoyed so much that I’m reading it to Julie and the girls at the dinner table each night. In the Newbery honor book Homesick, Jean Fritz tells her story about growing up in Hankow China for the first fourteen years of her life. Born to American missionary parents, Jean longs to return to a country she has never visited. More than anything, she wants to meet her grandma, roller skate, and not have to sing "God Save the King" anymore at her British school.
The book offers a fascinating look into the world of mainland China in the 1920s. The book is alternately tender, funny, and heart-breaking. It reads like Little House on the Prairie: Asia edition.
It’s been particularly fun for us to read it as a family, because many of Jean’s experiences parallel what Julie’s Dad and his family would have experienced in China in the 1920s where his family also served as missionaries. Even though Julie’s dad Paul is twelve years younger than Jean and his family left when he was two, there are many similarities. Jean’s family spent their summers in Kuiling which is where Paul was born and lived. In fact, it’s quite possible that Paul was born in the same hospital in Kuiling in which Jean’s baby sister was born. It’s probable that the two families knew some of the same people.
If you are at all interested in reading up on China, Homesick would be a pretty good place to start. As a book written for young adults, it’s a quick read at 160 pages. Maybe you could even do it as a family read-aloud.
-Jack
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