Somebody's Daughter
Beacon Press, 2005
young adult and adult, ISBN 978-0-8070-8388-8

Somebody's Daughter is the story of nineteen-year-old Sarah Thorson, who was adopted as a baby by a Lutheran couple in the Midwest. After dropping out of the University of Minnesota, she decides to study in Korea for a summer, more by happenstance than actual design, but as the summer progresses she becomes more and more intrigued by her Korean heritage and eventually embarks on a crusade to find her birthmother. Paralleling Sarah's story is that of Kyung-sook, who was forced by difficult circumstances to let her baby be swept away from her immediately after birth, but who has always longed for her lost child. The two stories are told side by side: Kyung-sook's is the remembrance of her childhood involvement with an American who eventually abandons her when she refuses to have an abortion, while Sarah's is the contemporary story of her deepening involvement with the culture and language of Korea, with Doug, her Korean American classmate, and with her search. These two narratives converge in one poignant moment, when the two women literally pass each other like ships in the night.

F is for Fabuloso
Harper Collins, 1999
ages 9 to 12, ISBN 978-0-380-97648-5

The sky had not yet begun to lighten, and Jin-Ha could see hard fingers of frost pressing on her window, outlined by the light from the streetlamp. She wanted to stay in her warm bed and never come out. Being cold—and knowing you were going to be even colder before you got any warmer—was the worst feeling.

Then she remembered her dream.
Then she remembered her math test.
Now she wanted to jump out of bed and
onto the first bus out of town.

How else to cope with this terrible thing she had done? She failed a math test and a quiz and she had lied to her parents. Lying to her parents had been ten times worse than telling them the truth: telling the truth would have gotten the unpleasant newsover with right away. By lying she was only postponing the agony. Everything only seemed all right; underneath, it was all wrong. All WRONG.

Night of the Chupacabra
HarperCollins, 1998
young adult, ISBN 978-0-380-97706-2

Mi-Sun, her brother Ju-Won, and their friend Lupe think the old man they meet in the village square is just trying to scare them with his stories of chupacabras, blood-sucking night creatures. Then a goat turns up with fang marks on its neck. And, even more puzzling, vegetables appear in the kitchen with strange marks where all the juice is sucked out of them. What's going on? Is there a chupacabra? And is it a part-time vegetarian? A mystery is not what Mi-Sun bargained for when she agreed to leave New York behind to spend her summer on Lupe's uncle's Mexican goat ranch. The three visitors find a lot to do: hiking in the mountains; buying sweet, icy paletas in the village; and making tortillas with the help of Tio Hector's cook. But something strange is going on at Rancho de Cabras, and the three north-of-the-border kids are determined to find out what. Will they have to catch the chupacabra before it catches them? Flavored with the details of daily life in rural Mexico, this funny, slightly scary mystery races to an exciting—and unexpected—finish.

Necessary Roughness
HarperCollins, 1996
young adult, ISBN 978-0-06-025124-6

Chan Jung Kim has always been popular. But that was when he lived in L.A. and was the star of his soccer team. Now his family’s moved—to a tiny town in Minnesota, where football’s the name of the game and nobody has ever seen an Asian American family before. Desperate to fit in, Chan throws himself into the game—but he feels like an outsider. For the first time in his life, he finds himself thinking about what it really means to be Korean—and what is really important. By turns gripping, painful, funny, and illuminating, Necessary Roughness introduces a major new talent and a fresh young voice to the Harper list.

Awards
1997 Best Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library); 1998 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)

Saying Goodbye
Houghton Mifflin, 1994
young adult, ISBN 978-0-395-67066-8

In this sequel to Finding My Voice, Ellen Sung arrives at Harvard for her freshman year. There she begins to explore her independence by taking a creative writing course in addition to her pre-med classes, finding a new boyfriend, a Korean-American, and becoming close friends with her African-American roommate.

If It Hadn't Been for Yoon Jun
Houghton Mifflin, 1993
ages 9 to 12, ISBN 978-0-395-62941-3

Adopted as a baby, 12-year-old Alice Larsen is of Korean heritage but feels 100% American. Then Yoon Jun, a Korean immigrant, moves to her small Minnesota town, and Alice's parents start pressuring her to make friends with the strange new boy as a way to get in touch with her heritage. Alice resists—what would her friends think? Anyway, she's American. But when she and Yoon Jun are assigned to work together on a school project, she learns about Korea—and about doing the right thing.

Finding My Voice
Houghton Mifflin, 1992
young adult, ISBN 978-0-395-62134-9

Ellen Sung is taken unawares by Tamper Sandel, and when he kisses her, her whole world shifts. She doesn't have time for a boyfriend, especially one who's probably not going to college. She's completely absorbed in keeping her grades up to please her strict immigrant parents, who will freak out if she doesn't get into Harvard. Even an evening with her best friend, Jessie, feels like guilty time away from her studies. She can't tell her parents about Tomper, or about the racist slurs she receives in school. These days, Ellen's not sure whom to please. And what about what she wants: does that matter at all?

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