Heidi Stevens: Need a book? Here are some that made readers feel like they belong in the world
Inspired by an 11-year-old girl's award-winning essay, I invited you, dear readers, to tell me the book that first made you feel like you belong.
Audrey Hall, the girl who kicked this whole thing off, chose "Blended" by Sharon Draper.
"Every week Isabella has to change houses," Audrey wrote in her essay for the New York City Public Library contest. "Sometimes I have go to my dad's house on the weekends too. In the text it states, 'Every Monday I wake up in a different bed than the week before,' and it also said, 'Some judge who had never even met me split me in half.'
"Isabella's mom is white and her dad is black," Audrey wrote. "Guess what? My mom is also white and my dad is black too. That makes me multiracial or mixed. In the book it stated on page 39: 'But the world can not see the inside of a person. What the world can see is color.'"
Here are some of yours (edited for length). A peek at the insides.
"The Namesake," Jhumpa Lahiri: "I grew up as a first-generation child of European parents (Croatian and Italian) and the book really summed up nicely the experience of having a 'home' life and an 'American' life. We spoke Croatian at home and ate mainly European-inspired foods, which meant I jumped on any chance to eat American junk food! I brought weird lunches to school (liver sausage sandwiches and napolitanke, Croatian wafer cookies). My mom had an accent (which I loved and always wished I had), and she sometimes got English words wrong. My
