The Interpreter/La Intérprete by Olivia Abtahi, illustrated by Monica Arnaldo (Kokila, 40 pages, ages 5-8). “Some kids had one job: to be a kid. Cecilia worked two.” Cecilia’s second job is the family interpreter, translating English to Spanish for her immigrant parents. This job takes her to places most kids don’t go, like the DMV, the bank, and the car mechanic. Cecilia used to have a partner, but her older brother “got promoted” by going away to college. At a parent-teacher conference, her teacher asks her how she’s doing. Cecilia starts to translate the question, then realizes it’s directed at her…and that she’s not doing great. She finally explodes, and her parents realize she’s under too much pressure. After a family meeting, they get some back-up: her brother comes home for a weekend, and her aunt offers to do some interpreting. Cecilia still loves to help her family, but now they work together to make sure she gets the time she needs to be a kid as well.

I’m so grateful for this book, which I can’t wait to share with my classes of international students, for whom I’m sure it will resonate. I love the illustrations that portray Cecilia in a business suit for her interpreter duties and use cartoon bubbles in blue for English and yellow for Spanish. There’s plenty of humor, but also good advice for kids to take breaks and get support from family members and other adults. The author and illustrator information on the back flap reveals that both of them served as kid interpreters for their own immigrant families.

Home Is a Wish by Julia Kuo (Roaring Brook Press, 32 pages, ages 4-8). A girl lives with her mother and grandmother. Sometimes, she and Mama or Amah go out, but they always come back home again. One day, though, they leave for good, and as they fly across the ocean, the girl wonders if there will ever be a place that feels like home again. The new place feels strange at first, but slowly, the family begins to go out and come back, until it starts to feel like home. There are new friends and newly familiar places, and she realizes that there are different homes for different times: “a home from before, a home for now, even a home for later.”

The immigrant experience is beautifully captured here with brief text and lovely illustrations of both home countries. The pictures and use of the word Amah suggest that the first home might be in Taiwan or China, while the later illustrations could portray Julia Kuo’s current home state of Washington, but the ambiguity makes this a more universal story. It would have been interesting to have an author’s note to learn how much, if any, of this story is based on her own childhood.