Day 8 of Summer 2019 #Bookaday Challenge: Pie in the Sky

Vlog Transcript Below

Slide 1 : Hi! My name is Kate Narita. This is day 8 of my summer 2019 #bookaday challenge. Today I will be talking about Pie in the Sky.

Slide 2: As always I like to talk about where I got the idea to read a book or how I obtained it. The author of Midsummer’s Mayhem, Rajani LaRocca suggested that I read Pie in the Sky. I’ll be talking more about Midsummer’s Mayhem tomorrow, but for now I want to point out the sweets on the cover of this novel. As you can imagine this novel pairs really nicely with a book called Pie in the Sky.

Slide 3: What’s not obvious from looking at the cover of Pie in the Sky is this is a novel about immigrants from Indonesia who move to Australia. It’s a masterful depiction of all the challenges immigrants face. The novel is partly told in words and partly told in pictures. Normally I prefer novels that are all done in words, but this one is masterful. The use of illustrations really highlight exactly how someone feels when they live in a new country. 

Slide 4: I’ve been fortunate to live in two foreign countries in my life. I spent ten months living in Chile when I was in college, and then when I was an adult and married I spent five months living in Japan with my family. It’s a really challenging time when one moves to a foreign country because one is not able to understand what’s being said. When I saw this picture I thought my gosh, that’s exactly how I felt! You can see he’s only catching a few words. Mostly it sounds like strange utterances to him, and he’s not able to understand what people are saying. Also, he feels like an alien. He feels like he doesn’t belong. This depiction of him with four eyes really shows just how much of an outsider he feels like at this time. Whenever a book captures exactly how I’ve felt in my life, it always stays close to my heart.

Slide 5: This book reminds me of Inside Out & Back Again. Inside Out & Back Again tells the story of a Vietnamese immigrant who moves to Alabama. It’s told in verse. So, it’s also a very powerful depiction of the emotions one feels when moving to a new country.

​Slide 6: Finally, I always like to include a book for teachers who want to talk to students about a subject but are unable to do so using a novel. Check out Anne Sibley O’Brien’s I’m New Here. It features three different immigrants, one from Guatemala, one from Korea and one from Somalia.