Winner of the 2023 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature

Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and sentence highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! "Father, is all of the world a refugee camp?" Young Kalia has never known life beyond the fences of the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. The Thai camp holds many thousands of Hmong families who fled in the aftermath of the little-known Secret War in Laos that was waged during America's Vietnam War. For Kalia and her cousins, life isn't always easy, but they still find ways to play, racing with chickens and riding a beloved pet dog. Just four years old, Kalia is still figuring out her place in the world. When she asks what is beyond the fence, at first her father has no answers for her. But on the following day, he leads her to the tallest tree in the camp and, secure in her father's arms, Kalia sees the spread of a world beyond. Kao Kalia Yang's sensitive prose and Rachel Wada's evocative illustrations bring to life this tender true story of the love between a father and a daughter. "In 1985, a four-year-old Hmong child sees her first glimpse of the world in this poetic autobiographical account by Yang. Born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand, per an author's note, young Kalia plays with her cousins as their families, Hmong refugees, struggle with hunger, racism, and fear: 'They are scared to return to the old country. They are scared to go to a new country.' When Kalia innocently asks if 'all of the world [is] a refugee camp,' her father climbs to the top of the tallest tree with her on his back to show her the wide view and distant mountains. Lush, multilayered art in a natural color palette by Wada emphasizes family and community interactions, rendered in a combination of traditional media, including graphite and watercolor, and digitally. A stirring, lyrical portrait of hope and intergenerational bonds. Back matter includes an author's note, a brief glossary, and a map."-starred, Publishers Weekly "In this moving, positive story, a father encourages his young daughter to confront challenges and look beyond borders. In Wada's scenes, no Hmong refugee appears skeletal, but the 'Humane Deterrence Policy' of the camp in Thailand, in 1985, includes just three days' worth of food a week. Kids play happily together, ride dogs and chase chickens; the aunties of the extended families embroider calmly; but soldiers appear as splotchy memory-shadows, behind pretty blue-green foreground leaves. Kalia has overheard talk about the war and adults' fears, and asks, 'Is all the world a camp?' Then, from a treetop, her father changes her perspective, assuring her she'll 'travel far to find peace.' Autobiographically based, like Yang's The Most Beautiful Thing, this book includes an account of the writer's successful subsequent life, pronunciation help, and a map. Wada seamlessly mixes media (graphite, watercolor, digital) in subdued hues into a simple, sensitive child's-eye depiction of the camp and its people, scaled for reading to a group. ­VERDICT This is a gentle celebration of vision, hope, and determination in a book for all collections."-starred, School Library Journal "It is 1985, and four-year-old Kalia spends her days in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand, playing with her cousins Mai and Yer and spending time with their two dogs. The Hmong families in the camp receive minimal rations every week, and Yang grounds the storytelling in the child's innocent point of view, with Kalia listening to everything the adults talk about-often, war-though she does not quite understand it. When Kalia asks her father if the world outside the gate that encloses them is the same as it is inside, he tries to explain the nature of their refugee camp and the world beyond. Dressed in their best clothes, Kalia and her father go to the top of the tallest tree in the camp, where he shows her the vast world that waits beyond the camp, telling her she will one day visit it all. This moving picture book

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