The Blue House I Loved

A Hmong girl remembers the lower level of a blue house, the first American home her aunt and uncle had after arriving as refugees. The building is long gone; the memory of it is not, and Yang builds the book around exactly that gap. It is a quieter register than her camp books, concerned with the ordinary first apartments and shared basements that resettlement actually consisted of, and which rarely appear in the histories. For a catalog where the refugee story is usually told through flight and arrival, this one is about the years immediately after, when nothing dramatic happens and a family simply starts. For ages 4 to 8, families, and libraries building a Hmong American picture-book collection.