Ten-year-old Mai accompanies her mother, Lin, on a journey to Vietnam. Her mother is trying to find the birth family she has never known. At the time Lin was left at an orphanage as a baby, her only possession was a kite. Even after a day of fruitless searching through volumes at the People's Hall of Records in Saigon, Lin refuses to give up. She believes the hand-made kite might offer a clue as to her parentage. The details of how Lin uses this clue to solve the mystery of her identity will captivate young readers, while at the same time it will introduce them to one family's personal tragedy suffered during the Vietnam War. The Lees' colored pencil and oil paintings distinctively use darker shades of brown to show the scenes taking place in the past that Lin and Mai successfully uncover. (Ages 8-12)

For use in schools and libraries only. Mai returns to Vietnam, the land of her mother's birth, to discover both a new country and something about herself.