Landed

Landed

• author:  Milly Lee "no author website"
• illustrator:  Yangsook Choi  http://www.yangsookchoi.com/
• year of publication:  2006
• publication city:  New York
• publisher:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• ISBN:  0-374-34314-4

Annotation: After leaving his home in southeastern China, twelve-year-old Sun is held and interrogated on Angel Island before being allowed to join his merchant father in San Francisco.

Personal thoughts:  I liked the attention to details that Milly Lee’s Landed presents in telling the story of a young Chinese immigrant attempting to enter the United States with his father.  It took immense preparation to immigrate into the U.S. due to the Chinese Exclusion Act.  The new arrivals were held at Angel Island, sometimes for a whole year.  The story was well written with lots of information.  The art is just okay.  I like each illustration, but it seems less important than the text that casts a shadow over the art.  This is one of those books that tells a story with text, and the art is a side note. 

Nonetheless, Landed teaches readers about the troubles taken to immigrate to the U.S. from China at the turn of 20^th Century.  It explains what a “Paper Son” is, what the Chinese Exclusion Act was and how detention at Angel Island operated.  

***Curricular Connection – Eleventh grade U.S. History, Civics – immigration, Chinese Exclusion Act, “Paper Son”.  Discuss the relationship between the immigration influx throughout history and the immigration issues facing the U.S. today.