Immigration

Amanda Freebold doesn't know what to do. Her father left three years ago for the new colony of Jamestown, in America, thousands of miles away. All Amanda has to remember him by is a little brass lion's head he gave his family to guard them while he is gone. Now her mother has just died, leaving Amanda to take care of her younger brother and sister.

When two Mongolian brothers inexplicably appear one morning in her sixth grade class, Julie, who lives in a town near Liverpool named Bootle, becomes their new friend and "Good Guide," navigating them through soccer, school uniforms, and British slang.

Through compelling reminiscences of his grandfather's life in America and Japan, Allen Say gives us a poignant acount of a family's unique cross-cultural experience. He warmly conveys his own love for his two countries, and the strong and constant desire to be in both places at once.

Early in the twentieth century, most Asian immigrants bound for America disembarked at a rocky island in San Francisco Bay. At the Angel Island Immigration Station, they were scrutinized, physically examined, interrogated, and confined behind barbed wire in crowded dormitories. Detainees often waited weeks or months to be processed. Those who passed inspection were allowed to enter the country known to many Chinese as Gold Mountain. Others, less fortunate, were sent back home or even died in detention.

In this warm, poignant story, a little girl hears how, long ago, another little red-haired girl--her grandmother--sailed across the sea with her older brother to join their immigrant parents in a strange new land called America.