House Without Walls

Gr 5-8–Lam is an 11-year-old Chinese Vietnamese girl who, along with her seven-year-old brother Dee Dee, becomes part of the Boat People Exodus in 1979 Vietnam. They are leaving behind their ma and ah mah to join their baba in America. Lam describes their harrowing journey, detailing their deteriorating conditions and daily fears on the boat, as well as their experiences at refugee camps in Malaysia and Indonesia. Readers will share the children’s emotional high and lows, and witness both the ugliness and beauty of humanity. Told in beautifully written verse from Lam’s perspective, this story is a combination of the real-life Lam’s journey, accounts told to the author by other refugees, and a bit of imagination. There is a map for context at the beginning of the book and a glossary, with several of those terms italicized throughout.