1. Thanhhà Lại Presented by Fran Kyrtatas
Children are naturally curious, and if left on their own without prescribed adult prejudices, they’ll do fine by each other. After all, what can be better than uncovering a pure, unspoiled mystery?
-Thanhhà Lại

2. First, you need to know how to pronounce her name
First, you need to know how to pronounce her name! Click below to find out, and to learn a little bit about the story and meaning behind it.
Thanhha Lai

3. About Thanhhà Lại…
She fled Vietnam with her family on a navy ship when she was just ten years old, and her father was captured by the Viet Cong.
She had to acclimate to her new life in Montgomery, Alabama, where she struggled with a new language and culture.
She graduated from the University of Texas and wrote for an Orange County California Paper, The Register.
It took her 15 years to finish the book that would eventually become Inside Out and Back Again.
She currently lives in New York with her family and teaches writing at Parsons: The New School for Design.

4. Thanhhà Lại is best known for her free verse novel, Inside Out and Back Again, which is semi-autobiographical.
This beautifully told story takes the reader from Vietnam to Alabama in Just as Saigon falls to the communists, ten year old Hà and her family flee Vietnam by navy ship. After weeks at sea, with little food and water, they end up in a refugee camp in Guam, and then Florida, before settling in Alabama with a sponsor. Ha and her family must adjust to a very new world where she struggles to learn English and fit in, and where no one else looks like her. She also must accept that her father will not be coming home.

5. Just a few awards…
National Book Award for Young People's Literature, 2011
Newbery Honor, 2012
Jane Addams Children's Book Award Honor for Older Children, 2012
ALA Notable Children 's Book 2012, Middle;
Booklist 2011 Editors' Choice, Books for Youth, Fiction, Middle Reader
Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Books of 2011
Publishers Weekly Best Children's Books 2011, Fiction
SLJ Best Books of 2011, Fiction
Booklist Lasting Connections of 2012, Social Studies
Notable Children's Book in the English Language Arts, 2012
CCBC Choices, 2012
Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2012, World History & Culture

6. Inside Out and Back Again
Is a fantastic middle grade novel, and can work for 4th-8th graders.
Younger students will need assistance with pronunciations of names and places, and all students will need background information about the Vietnam War.
Would be terrific as a teacher read aloud, whole class novel study, literature circle, or book club.
Can be paired with a Social Studies curriculum or character building lessons.

7. Why does Thanhhà Lại’s work belong in every library?
She points to her chest: MiSSS SScott, saying it three times, each louder with even more spit. I repeat, MiSSS Sscott, careful to hiss every s. She doesn’t seem impressed. I tap my own chest: Hà.
She must have heard
Ha,
as in funny ha-ha-ha.
She fakes a laugh.
I repeat, Hà,
and wish I knew
enough English
to tell her
to listen for
the diacritical mark,
this one directing
the tone
downward.
My new teacher tilts
her head back,
fakes
an even sadder laugh.
p.140 Inside Out and Back Again
Why does Thanhhà Lại’s work belong in every library?
Her books promote global awareness.
58,000 Americans were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than 3 million lives were lost; we should not forget.
Bullying and xenophobia are important issues that are brought to the forefront.
It is vital that our children are taught to have empathy for others.
We continue to have refugees coming into our country, from many parts of the world; the issue continues to be very relevant.
She gives us all another reason to LOVE poetry!

8. Birthday Wishes One of my favorite passages:
Wishes I keep to myself: Wish I could do what boys do and let the sun darken my skin, and scars grid my knees. Wish I could let my hair grow, but Mother says the shorter the better to beat Saigon’s heat and lice. Wish I could lose my chubby cheeks. Wish I could stay calm no matter what my brothers say.
Wish Mother would stop
chiding me to stay calm,
which makes it worse.
Wish I had a sister
to jump rope with
and sew doll clothes
and hug for warmth
in the middle of the night.
Wish father could come home
so I can stop daydreaming
that he will appear
in my classroom
in a white navy uniform
and extend his hand toward me
for all my classmates to see.
Mostly I wish
Father would appear in our doorway
and make Mother’s lips
curl upward,
lifting them from
a permanent frown
of worries.
p.30 Inside Out and Back Again
One of my favorite passages:
Birthday Wishes
We learn a lot about Hà in this repeated poem.
It is honest, innocent, and sad all at the same time.
Hà’s father has been missing since she was a baby.

9. Thanhha Lai’s Second Novel
takes us back to Vietnam, when 12 year old Vietnamese-American Mia (Mai) travels with her grandmother, to find out the truth about the grandfather she never met, who went missing during the war. Vietnam is the last place Mia wants to spend her summer, when she could be surfing with her friends in California. She finds out that there is a lot more to this noisy country, full of strange foods, traffic, and fast-talking relatives.
New York Times bestseller
New York Times Review Notable Book
Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
NPR's Best Books of 2015

10. Listen, Slowly is “I won’t learn Vietnamese.” A sigh. “Then be mute.”
Ugh. “I’ll start making B’s.”
“If you can stand it, go ahead.”
UGH!! “I’ll start wearing eyeliner.”
“Then get racoon eyes.”
“I’ll wear-”
“Listen, Bà has sacrificed everything for us. We’ve raised you to be considerate, so act like it.”
p.25, Listen, Slowly
A conversation between Mai (Mia) and her father shortly after they arrive in Vietnam.
Listen, Slowly is
not written in verse, but is a realistic fiction novel that would appeal to 5th-8th grade students.
So many Americans are immigrants, or are the children or grandchildren of immigrants, and the clash between cultures is one that many of us can connect to.
Tween and Teen readers of all cultural backgrounds will be able to relate to Mia (Mai).

11. Listen, Slowly gives readers another reason
Connect to the Social Studies Curriculum.
to learn about the beautiful country, people, foods, culture, history, and language of Vietnam.
Lead a research project.

12. Raising Children Inside a War
This amazing poem was published by the New York Times on April 21, 2017.
Please follow the link to read the full poem. It is too lengthy for me to include in its entirety. See the beginning of the poem on the following slide.
Raising Children Inside a War
I was 2 years old in 1967, too young to remember much about the war. So recently I sat down to interview my 86-year-old mother. Here’s her story. It’s written in a prose-poem style to reflect how my mother thinks in Vietnamese. 
-THANHHÀ LẠI

13. 1967
Our family ăn Tết to, welcomed grandly, the Year of the Goat so the younger children could believe our lives in Sài Gòn remained unfractured even though their father was captured by the Communists the previous spring.
I hired an expert to wrap in banana leaves twenty square-shaped bánh chungs.
I hired an expert to wrap in banana leaves twenty square-shaped bánh chungs. We stayed awake night before the eve boiling the Tết cakes in a steel water drum. All arms stiffened from stirring a pot thick with sugary mung beans, stirred and stirred then poured chè kho onto a tray wide as a mat.
Morning of Tết each child received crisp money in red envelopes. The oldest daughter just out of high school received a floral-patterned áo dài to wear to her first job as a translator.  Her father gone, she must work as I was weaning the last child. The six boys each owned two new white school button downs
and a pair of blue school pants. The two youngest girls wore matching pink dresses from a French boutique.
How they laughed and ate, same as when their father was home.
I told the six youngest, ages 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2, father was training again with the United States Navy. They were to study and make him proud.
I believed without blinking their father would be returned. The Communists were fighting to unite the country. Why would they harm a fellow northerner who never shot a gun, who enlisted in the south’s navy to earn an officer’s salary for his family?
Like most young men in the north he first joined the nationalists to expel the French from Vietnam. But soon he understood he would likely die in the jungle, by a lake, in a war where nationalists flipped into Communists and claimed his ancestral land for their cause. He went from Hà Nội to Sài Gòn when the country divided in 1954, and I joined him as a mother of three.

14. Interviews with Thanhhà Lại:
School Library Journal
NPR
Publishers Weekly
National Book Foundation
Orange Coast Magazine
Publishing Perspectives

15. Interviews continued…
NPR All Things Considered
TIME for Kids
Teaching Books

16. Viet Kids
Thanhhà Lại started this non- profit to purchase much needed bicycles for poor students in Vietnam, to dramatically cut down on their long school commutes.
30-50 bicycles are purchased each year, along with funding for tuition, uniforms, and rice.
Check out: et-kids/ if you would like to make a donation.

17. References
Books and Articles Lai, T. (April 21, 2017). Raising Children Inside a War. New York Times. Lai, T. (2011). Inside Out and Back Again. New York, New York: Scholastic by arrangement with Harper Collins Children’s Books. Lai, T. (2015). Listen, Slowly. New York, New York: Harper Collins Children’s Books. Websites Coffey, H. June 21, 2017, Independent. Frierson, J. March 30, A Biography of Thanhha Lai. Thanhha Lai, Audio Name Pronunciation. Vietnam War, 2009, A&E Networks. Thanhha Lai’s Website