This is a lovely gem of a middle grades story about Meilan, a Chinese-American girl living in Boston who then moves with her family to a small town in Ohio. It is woven through with Chinese legends and language since she and her family have kept their heritage alive and she is bilingual. Moving is hard, always, but especially so when she is thrust into a town that is very White and very small town – a switch from living in Chinatown in a big city. The family is still coping with the loss of the family matriarch, her grandma, and now must cope with new jobs, an increasing need to use English, new people at school, lack of access to the familiar foods they used to buy in Chinatown… so many changes. One of the worst for Meilan is that her new school wants to call her Melanie, and she feels like she’s losing her identity. The book weaves Chinese myth and and family legend into the realistic narrative in a meaningful way. I loved the explanation of Meilan learning to write in Mandarin/Pinyin and the multiple meanings & characters for similar sounding words, as well as including idiomatic expressions in both English and Chinese. Students who enjoyed Front Desk by Kelly Yang will love this book, as will anyone who can empathize with the struggles of being different in a new place. I highly recommend this book.