Title: Tell Us We're Home
Author: Marina Budhos
Category/Genre/Themes: Middle Grade, Contemporary, Friendship, Immigration
Publisher: Atheneum Books
Author's Website: http://www.marinabudhos.com/
Summary: Jaya, Maria, and Lola are just like the other eighth-grade girls in the wealthy suburb of Meadowbrook, New Jersey. They want to go to the spring dance, they love spending time with their best friends after school, sharing frappés and complaining about the other kids. But there’s one big difference: all three are daughters of maids and nannies. And they go to school with the very same kids whose families their mothers work for. (taken from the author's website)
First Line: Meadowbrook, New Jersey, looks like it's right out of an old-time postcard.
The Skinny: Budhos' next book in the MG market reveals her full mastery of the pen, outshining her MG debut Ask Us No Questions by a landslide. Some other authors who take a more ambitious storytelling angle flounder at the unravelling of too many story threads. Budhos, on the other hand, flourishes with the added textures to her story. Filled with moments of kindness, love, heartbreak, and fear, it's message of friends, family, and home shine like a blaze against a backdrop of a world that doesn't want them.
