There’s No Place like Home for the Holidays
When you’re a kid, it’s easy to believe that everyone else has a perfect life and yours is the only one with unflattering aspects that are best kept secret. Bai Jian’s dad has arranged for him to attend a fancy boarding school for sixth grade and he’s sure that all the other kids will be from “normal” families. His dad drinks too much, is terrible with money, and always has a new scheme for success but fails at every turn. These failures extend to his romantic relationships as Bai Jian’s mom left when he was a baby and none of the subsequent girlfriends have lasted very long. In fact, this boarding school idea is just his dad’s latest scheme to get Bai Jian out of his hair so that he can travel and pursue dreams of success and riches unencumbered by his son.
These issues are just too complicated and shameful to bring up with his classmates, so Bai Jian mostly keeps to himself. When the holiday break rolls around and the students are all going home, Bai Jian’s dad is nowhere to be found and he must make his own arrangements for somewhere to stay. Desperate to avoid alerting his classmates and school administration to this plight, he visits every adult he knows (from his dad’s ex-girlfriend to his aunt and even his estranged mother) to see if he can spend the holiday with them.
The result is something akin to the wildly successful 2023 film The Holdovers. A story of an earnest and misunderstood young man whose life is made exceptionally more difficult by the behavior of dysfunctional adults. Readers’ hearts will ache for Bai Jian as he is continually let down by grown-ups and feels ashamed of his circumstances. This is a moving story that reminds us that nobody is perfect (especially adults) and that being vulnerable, admitting our weaknesses, and accepting help from others is a great strength. Sadly, even though this is a vital idea for kids to embrace, this type of clear-eyed view of the world is often missing from young people’s literature.
Not only is Tilted Sky thematically different from most novels you’ll find in the kid’s section, but it’s also one of the only ones translated from Chinese. It provides a compelling view into a place and culture that many young readers don’t get to experience, with a story and message that will change how they see and understand the world. Even if Bai Jian’s circumstances wildly differ from our own, there are universal life lessons to be gleaned from his story.
Tilted Sky I 9781646143832 I $18.99 I Hardcover I On Sale: 6/11