The Many Meanings of Meilan, by Andrea Wang

    Meilan is a middle school Taiwanese-American living in Boston with her extended family when a bedtime story that she tells her niece one night turns the family into a quarreling clan. The infighting escalates and continues for months, resulting in a move across the country for Meilan, her parents and her grandfather. In their new town in Ohio, Meilan really struggles to find herself among mostly White classmates and far from her best friend, her old schoolmates and the rest of her family.

    This first middle grade novel by author Wang has a lot of really good themes in it, the strongest of which includes identity, especially where race is concerned. Meilan finds that in her new town most people don't know a lot about other people or cultures, certainly not hers, and as she tries to navigate all of the negativity that that ignorance brings, she has to find sources of strength within, rethinking events and memories - even past relationships - to discover herself.

    

    There is a lot to like about this book, but I just couldn't get super excited about it. There were a few things that I felt Wang did that weakened the overall effect of what is a good story. For instance, she inserts a lot of Mandarin Chinese into the story, which makes sense as Meilan is pushed to learn her ancestral language by her parents. But she inserts it so often that it took away from the flow of the story for me. She also uses words that I don't think Meilan would use, such as when she's describing a certain food her parents enjoy but not easy to find in Ohio. In Meilan's narration, she describes the food as "gelatinous"...which sounds like it came straight from the dictionary, not a 7th grader. 

    

    Perhaps these things are my own pug biases coming out. After all, The Many Meanings of Meilan is getting really good reviews in most places. And I love much about Meilan and this story. But I couldn't get past the few things, like those I mentioned, that seemed to be due to a new author. With a few books under her belt, I think Wang would have created a stronger story. This one is good, but not as good as it could have been. 3 paws and a wag!