Caged

by Kao Kalia Yang, Khou Vue (Illustrator)

Overview

A poignant picture book about a young Hmong girl born and raised in a refugee camp who imagines what lies beyond the bounds of its borders.

A young Hmong girl has never been outside the camp she lives in with her parents and thousands of other families. Most days, she spends her time playing with her cousins and pretending they can fly above the clouds and far away from here.

When her family’s papers are finally approved, she’s uncertain if she’s ready to leave everything—and everyone—she’s ever known behind. But on the day she leaves, her favorite aunt, Golden Flower, sees her off with the words, Your wings have arrived.

With poetic text by Kalia Kao Yang and stunning art by Khou Vue, Caged is about the power of imagination, resilience, and dreaming of freedom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781984816368
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	05/28/2024
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	1,078,914
Product dimensions:	11.31(w) x 9.31(h) x 0.37(d)
Lexile:	AD810L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer. She is the author of the adult memoirs The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, The Song Poet, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang is also the author of the children’s books A Map Into the World, The Shared Room, The Most Beautiful Thing, and Yang Warriors. Her work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, and has garnered four Minnesota Book Awards. Kao Kalia Yang lives in Minnesota with her family, and teaches and speaks across the nation.

Khou Vue is a first-generation Hmong American graphic designer and illustrator with a BFA from Kent State University. In her spare time, she loves traveling the world with her daughter and husband. She also loves trying out every bakery/ice cream shop she comes across and scoping out the children's section of bookstores.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Caged By Kao Kalia Yang:

"Offers deep emotional insight into the refugee experience." —-  Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2024-02-17
A 6-year-old Hmong child grows up in a refugee camp, unaware of the outside world.

“I live in a cage but I don’t know it,” states the unnamed protagonist, who was born here. The child’s deftly paced narration describes surroundings—“bald hills and dry fields of flying dirt”—shared with “grandmothers with no teeth” and “mothers with babies on their backs.” Armed guards patrol the area smoking cigarettes at night, “moving like fireflies around the edges of our world.” Despite the bleak environment, children still use their imaginations to travel beyond their borders “to a place far from here!” These moments of joy break up harsh realities such as arduous living conditions and people fleeing war. Vue’s simple cartoons are textured with splatters of colors and lines set against largely white backdrops; with honesty and sensitivity, the artwork portrays the protagonist’s struggle to understand the concept of war while observing the pain endured by adults in the camp. Moments of lightness temper the heaviness, especially when an auntie insists that the young narrator isn’t “a child of poverty, war or despair”; the child is “hope being born.” When the family finally leaves the camp, the auntie whispers, “Your wings have arrived.” In an author’s note, Yang discusses how, after fleeing Laos, her own family lived in Thailand’s Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, where she was born.

Offers deep emotional insight into the refugee experience. (Picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews