A Zainichi Korean teen comes of age in Japan in this groundbreaking debut novel about prejudice and diaspora.

Seventeen-year-old Ginny Park is about to get expelled from high school--again. Stephanie, the picture book author who took Ginny into her Oregon home after she was kicked out of school in Hawaii, isn't upset; she only wants to know why. But Ginny has always been in-between. She can't bring herself to open up to anyone about her past, or about what prompted her to flee her native Japan. Then, Ginny finds a mysterious scrawl among Stephanie's scraps of paper and storybook drawings that changes everything: The sky is about to fall. Where do you go?

Ginny sets off on the road in search of an answer, with only her journal as a confidante. In witty and brutally honest vignettes, and interspersed with old letters from her expatriated family in North Korea, Ginny recounts her adolescence growing up Zainichi, an ethnic Korean born in Japan, and the incident that forced her to leave years prior. Inspired by her own childhood, author Chesil creates a portrait of a girl who has been fighting alone against barriers of prejudice, nationality, and injustice all her life--all while searching for a place to belong.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Soho Teen
Published: 04/05/2022
ISBN: 9781641292290
Pages: 168
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.70w x 0.80d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2022
Publishers Weekly 04/18/2022
Shelf Awareness 04/26/2022
Booklist 04/03/2023

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 521845 / Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart
Reading Level: 5.1 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 5