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by: Rajani LaRocca
WOOHOO! It's Aadya Reads 100th Post! (Sorry for the pause in posts!)
Amazon Recommended Age: 8-12 years old
Lexile: N/A
Sensitive Topic(s): Illness and death
Red, White and Whole is a novel-in-verse written by Rajani LaRocca follows 13-year-old Reha, an Indian-American girl living in Boston in 1983. She's torn between the traditions and expectations of her Indian-immigrants parents and just being a normal MTV-loving American teen. "But Reha’s parents don’t understand why she’s conflicted—they only notice when Reha doesn’t meet their strict expectations. Reha feels disconnected from her mother, or Amma, although their names are linked—Reha means “star” and Punam means “moon”—but they are a universe apart.
Then Reha finds out that her Amma is sick. Really sick." Reha, who dreams of being a doctor even though she can't bear the sight of blood, is intent on making her Amma well again. "She’ll be the perfect daughter, if it means saving her Amma’s life."
What I Thought:
This is a really interesting book and different to what I read normally in a lot of ways - first, it is written in verse, so that was a change for me, personally. Next, Red, White, and Whole was set in 1980s US, also a time period that doesn't really come up much in the books I read. All in all, the author showed and captured Reha's "two different lives" amazingly. It was as if the author had gone through the exact same experience as Reha. In fact, she mentioned this on Goodreads: "Although the story is fictional, there are so many aspects of this book that were inspired directly from my own experiences growing up as an immigrant in the 1980s."
👏🏽