My Name Is Ai Lin

PreS-Gr 3–Ai Lin has to teach her classmates how to say her name properly. When she started school, the kids said American words and names instead of her name. She carefully explains the meaning of her name and how it fits into her culture. Ai Lin does a beautiful job with the explanations and the lovely, muted artwork shows her loving family and her joy at being a respected part of the school community. This is an excellent book for the beginning of the school year and will pair well with other books about names like Kevin Henkes’s Chrysanthemum or Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow’s Your Name is a Song. With a very light touch, it offers discussion points on respect for others, cultural traditions, and the how and why parents choose names. The author’s notes about her own experiences with her name as well as the Chinese characters for the names in the book are a nice addition.