"Set against the backdrop of a middle school cultural fair, this tenderhearted and funny novel from the author of The Unbeatable Lily Hong stars twelve-year-old Sophie Mu—who discovers the power of defining oneself as she navigates friendship drama, family expectations, and learning about her Hui, her Chinese Muslim identity.
Sophie’s work on the Chinese booth at last year’s Rainbow Fair is a point of pride for her and her parents, even if Sophie and her best friend, Katie, think the whole thing is a little silly. Sophie's family is Hui, Chinese Muslim. The Muslim part is something she doesn't know much about. Her parents prefer to keep it private. So when it gets slipped to an overenthusiastic teacher that Sophie is Muslim, the only Muslim in her class, suddenly Sophie is in charge of debuting a booth representing the Islamic religion she doesn't practice, an assignment she is determined to keep secret from her parents.
Having to choose between leaving the Chinese booth or taking on double the workload leaves Sophie feeling conflicted. Why does she have to choose which part of herself to represent? Is it an issue with her or with how the Rainbow Fair is organized?
Between juggling both booths, old and new friends, and learning more about her Muslim faith and ancestry, Sophie starts to notice how her working on two booths starts to spark change throughout the student body. It turns out Sophie isn't the only one at Monroe Middle School whose identity isn't so simply categorized by the Rainbow Fair's limited booths.
One thing is for sure, this year's Rainbow Fair won't look anything like it did in the past, and Sophie begins to realize that that might not be a bad thing at all."
"A smart, funny, and heartfelt middle grade novel about Lily Hong’s attempts to save her parents’ Chinese school and the town’s community center using all the resources she has—devoted friends, ingenuity, a passion for filmmaking, mediocre dance moves (at best), and perhaps even her archnemesis.
If there’s one thing Lily Hong can’t stand, it’s being second best. That’s why she and Max Zhang have been bitter rivals ever since he swooped into town as the new kid with the cool clothes and his fancy downtown Chinese school and showed her up in the fifth-grade reading challenge.
She had wanted to be the one to win the pizza party for their class. Okay, so that was two years ago . . . her best friends Kelli and Lauren didn’t totally get it, but they were on her side. And that’s why they agreed to help Lily with her submission for the Clarktown’s Got Talent video competition. Filmmaking is Lily’s passion—which means winning is more important to her than ever.
Unfortunately, finding time to work on her video submission is proving harder than ever. In addition to doing regular homework and attending the Chinese school her parents own and run out of the Clarktown Community Center, Lily’s been getting weird vibes from her parents lately and she can tell something is up. Then her mom announces that the Clarktown Community Center is having its first showcase, and the students of Hong Chinese Academy will be performing as a group—traditional Chinese dance!
Lily is more confused than anything else—the community center is practically falling apart and they think this is a good time to put on a show? Could it be that the community center is in trouble and the only way to save it is to make the showcase a huge success? Lily has no choice. She’ll have to juggle the video competition and the art of Chinese dance simultaneously. But when Max Zhang unexpectedly shows up in her class at Chinese school with his perfect Mandarin and his surprisingly good dance skills, Lily might just have to embrace her longtime rival as a key part of her plan to save the community center."
"An epic story of love and betrayal set against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square protests
In Heiress Apparently, Gemma Huang's big acting break led her to Beijing, where she uncovered an incredible family secret. This second novel in the Daughters of the Dynasty series delves further into Gemma's complex and storied legacy, moving back one generation to tell the story of Gemma's mother, Lei, as she finds love against the backdrop of 1980s China and the Tiananmen Square protests and makes a difficult decision that forever alters the course of her life."
"The first book in an epic and romantic YA series following the fictionalized descendants of the only officially recognized empress regent of China.
Gemma Huang is a recent transplant to Los Angeles from Illinois, having abandoned plans for college to pursue a career in acting, much to the dismay of her parents. Now she's living with three roommates in a two-bedroom hovel, auditioning for bit roles that hardly cover rent. Gemma's big break comes when she's asked to play a lead role in an update of M. Butterfly filming for the summer in Beijing. When she arrives, she's stopped by paparazzi at the airport. She quickly realizes she may as well be the twin of one of the most notorious young socialites in Beijing. Thus kicks off a summer of revelations, in which Gemma uncovers a legacy her parents have spent their lives protecting her from--one her mother would conceal from her daughter at any cost."
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