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Inside Out and Back Again

Inside Out and Back Again

Author: Thanhha Lai
Genre: Historical Fiction
Award: Newbery Honor
Grade: 4th grade and up


The story is set during the Vietnam war and it is written in short poems. A 10-year-old girl named Ha moves from Saigon to Alabama due to the war. She moved with her mother and brothers and they traveled by boat to America. Ha struggles as she tries to settle to the country she moved in, which is the United States. She struggles on moving on from the country she has known growing up to settling in a new country. At the end of the book, they finally settled and they have courage that life will get better for them.


This book is unique because it is written in a series of short poems. The writing is smooth and clear. I would recommend this to students 4th grade and up because it is a book of poems and it is a thick book. I like Ha’s story because it tells the story of people who moved to other countries and they are culture shock. The title is called inside out and back again because the fortune teller predicted their life is going to turn “inside out”, which it did because they moved to another country. “Back again” is because as they settled, they are back to their own selves and they found a way to be back to normal.  

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