Booktalk #1

Hanna is excited for her new town. She’s been traveling with her Papa for three years now, moving across the prairie, and she’s eager for a steady home, a place for her Papa to open a shop, and a chance to finally attend a real school. The frontier town of LaForge, in the Dakota Territory, has the potential for all three. Papa plans to set up a mercantile to sell fabric, and Hanna has a secret plan to turn it into a dress shop, like her mother’s before she died. Hanna’s been doing all the family sewing for years now, and spends her free time working on her own patterns and designs. She knows she could be a success!

But Hanna is nervous too. She knows from her childhood in California that most settlers don’t like having neighbors that aren’t white, and Hanna is half-Chinese. 

Hanna’s fears are justified when she’s met with racism, and most of her classmates refuse to go to school with her. Still, with her drive and confidence, plus a kind teacher and a single new friend, Hanna knows there’s a way forward. Can she show the town she’s more than what they see, and convince her Papa to trust her with their future? (New Hampshire Great Stone Face Book Award nominee, 2022)

Booktalk #2

In 1880, Hanna and her father leave heartache and tragedy behind in Los Angeles to settle in the Dakota Territory. Hanna has big goals: to finish her education (her mother’s dream for her) and to help her father establish a successful shop in the small prairie town. She also has a secret dream: to make a friend. Given her spirited intelligence, her talent as a seamstress, and her kind heart, there be little to stand in her way - but Hanna’s mother was Asian, and racism is as real on the prairie as it had been in San Francisco, making her dreams nearly impossible, if not dangerous, to reach.  Vermont Golden Dome Book Award, 2022)