Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me access to the free advanced digital copy of this book.

A beautiful story about family, fitting it, and not losing yourself and your culture when life brings on big changes.

While I've read stories of a family preparing to immigrate and struggling to adjust to their new home, this one has some significant differences. The major difference is that the role of racism is much smaller than in most of the other books. It's present, but it's more of an example of feeling like an outsider, like you can't be comfortable in the new home. It's more about how drastically different their life is than the constant struggle to survive and belong.

Sisterly love rings loud and true with as a girl struggles to figure out her place in the world.

Peijing hopes the family's move to Australia will work out, and she tries her best to deal with the changes, but steering through a new culture, daily life, language, and people is quite the challenge. If that wasn't hard enough, Ah-Ma and Mama are mentally breaking down, which means Peijing needs to step in and help more on that end, too. Weighted down and not sure how to handle everything along with the problems at school, Peijing tries her best to figure everything out.

Note: This one does address themes such as domestic violence, dementia, and touches upon racism.

This is a read with tons of heart. Peijing, is a kind and family orientated girl, who tries her best to keep a positive outlook but often feels like she's sinking, instead. She struggles not only with the new environment and language but can't seem to find her place in school. Still, she does her best and keeps an inspiring and heart-warming attitude...even when it proves difficult, at times. Especially her relationship with her younger sister touches the heart (even when things aren't always smooth) and makes this a wonderful read about the sisterly bond.

While there are difficult issues in these pages, the author does approach them with a gentler touch and keeps it age appropriate. The troubles foreigners face are well-laid and brought across in a way, kids can relate to with scenes where embarrassment and/or frustration are palpable. Even the deterioration of Ah-Ma and Mama's problems are brought across with care.

I especially enjoyed the weave with Chinese myth and paper art as it added the right dusting of magic to keep everything from weighing down too much. There's always a sense of hope as well as a few characters, who really let the light shine in. The pacing remains steady for the most part with only a few sections, which slow a bit, and the writing style hits a younger age group well, although the sentence flow sometimes felt geared for a younger audience. Still, it's a well-done tale, easy to get lost in Peijing's world, and leaves the reader with more than a couple of tidbits for thought. I received a DRC and enjoyed experiencing Peijing's tale.

This book took me through a journey of a young girl navigating big emotions that made me alternate between worrying over her and crying in relief/out of happiness. I liked the way the fables were interwoven between chapters and how everyone in the book had equal opportunity at character development.