Pob Zeb Daig Caj Pas (The Rock in My Throat)

The Hmong-language edition of The Rock in My Throat, and the reason to shelve it separately from the English one. Kao Kalia Yang tells the true story of the years she stopped speaking at school after watching her parents mocked for their English, and the silence that grew until it sat in her throat like a stone. The Hmong text runs alongside the English, so a parent can read it in Hmong to a child who is being taught in English — which is precisely the situation the book is about. Carolrhoda has now issued several of Yang's picture books this way, and they are among the very few Hmong-language children's books produced to trade standards rather than self-published. Read it after From the Tops of the Trees, which ends where this one begins. For ages 5 to 9, for bilingual households, and for classrooms where a Hmong-speaking child is the one not talking.