BRIDGE ACROSS THE SKY
an Angel Island novel-in-verse
Atheneum Books For Young Readers
(Simon & Schuster)
Publication date: August 27, 2024
ISBN-13: 9781665948593
Grades: 9 and up
Ages: 14 – 99
Tai Go arrives at the Angel Island immigration station in 1924 with his father and grandfather, where, due to the dictates of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which only allows certain categories of immigrants to enter the country, they are detained for three months while their claims are evaluated.
Though he didn’t want to come to America in the first place, Tai Go’s experience of the prison-like conditions and harsh treatment of detention, the friends he makes, and the poems he discovers carved into the walls of the barracks help him to begin imagining a life he might live in this new land. But first, he has to come to terms with his own racism, and with a perceived rival who stands in the way of his happiness.