about the book
It is 1969, and everyone is excited for the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, including half-black, half-Japanese girl Mimi.
Mimi is entering the seventh grade. That would be daunting enough, but she also has to start at a new school in a new town in Vermont, where most of her classmates will be white, and few if any have ever seen a child of mixed-race heritage.
They gawk. Mimi feels like she is an alien to her classmates, and they don’t even have to go to space!
However, Mimi has learned resilience from her Japanese mother and Black father. She knows how to fight for her right to stand out. She stops trying to fit in. Instead, Mimi joins Shop Class, scorning girls’ Home Ec, and even though she is told her dream is unattainable, Mimi never stops imagining becoming an astronaut!
about the book
When she was in second grade, Marilyn Hilton wrote a story. Its hero was Dimey the Dime, who traveled all around the world in different people’s pockets! Her teacher wrote on her report card that “Marilyn has a gift for writing.” Two weeks passed, and Marilyn never received her gift from her teacher! She asked her mother about it, who laughed and explained what her teacher’s comment meant.
Of course, that comment really was a gift, as Marilyn has realized. Looking back, she credits that moment with inspiring her to go through high school and college with a love for reading and writing. She took as many classes and activities that involved writing as she could. She has never stopped writing.
However, other life things often had to take precedence, like working to support herself and her family. However, something was missing. She just had to write stories! So while working full time during the day as a technical writer, she decided to go to graduate school at night for creative writing. Five years later, she handed in her final thesis, the day before her second child was born! Then, at a writer’s conference, she met an editor looking for a particular kind of book for young girls, which Marilyn had written. That was how she first got published!
Source:
Author website
Also by Marilyn Hilton:
Found Things. Atheneum Books for Young Readers. 2014.
read more!
Found Things by Marilyn Hilton
River Rose Byrne wakes up one morning speaking in an odd accent. It may have something to do with the disappearance of her older brother, Theron. Or could it be Daniel, the school bully? Or maybe it’s the eerily familiar house she keeps exploring in her dreams—a dream world her new friend, Meadow Lark, seems to know something about…
It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas
Zomorod, an Iranian girl, has moved homes once again, this time to Newport Beach, California. Determined to fit in this time, she adopts the Brady Bunch name of Cindy. Unfortunately, it is the 1970s, and Iran is soon to be in the news in a bad way—American hostages have been taken there. Cindy now must face anti-Iranian sentiments as well as the everyday struggles of school.
Somewhere Among by Ann Donwerth-Chikamatsu
Ema is excited for the arrival of her little sister, hoping to finally have someone who understands what it is like to be both Japanese and American. However, in Japan, Ema has to contend with a cold, tightfisted, reprimanding grandmother, and then, when the tragedy of 9/11 happens, Ema and her family will have to deal with the fallout even a world away.