At the playground, Nadine hears a girl her age speaking to her doll in an unfamiliar language. Eager to learn more, Nadine asks the girl, Yan, if she has a \u201ccoming-here story.\u201d Yan replies that she\u2019s a recent immigrant from China, and the two children bond. Later, on her way home, Yan asks a woman named Symona, who\u2019s singing in a different language as she gardens, about her coming-here story and learns that she emigrated from Russia as a young woman. Symona in turn connects with Rafid, from Bangladesh, after hearing him talking on the phone in a different tongue. In true \u201csix degrees of separation\u201d style, the book comes full circle as a young boy hears Nadine speaking Creole to her mother and asks about her country of origin; her mother explains that she herself is from Haiti, while Nadine was born here. Berke\u2019s sweet tale of the domino effect that starts with one curious and accepting girl\u2019s question is sorely needed in this time of division and discord, as is the characters\u2019 use of the term \u201ccoming-here story\u201d to inquire about others\u2019 heritages, rather than the potentially more intrusive \u201cWhere are you from?\u201d Powell\u2019s soft and welcoming, watercolorlike illustrations capture present and past at once as each immigrant\u2019s history is revealed. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the playground, Nadine hears a girl her age speaking to her doll in an unfamiliar language. Eager to learn more, Nadine asks the girl, Yan, if she has a \u201ccoming-here story.\u201d Yan replies that she\u2019s a recent immigrant from China, and the two children bond. Later, on her way home, Yan asks a woman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}