Young children can stop talking for many different reasons. Khao Kalia Yang stopped talking at age seven in the first grade. Her teachers and even her parents can't seem to understand why, but Khao later tells us that she stopped wanting to speak the language spoken by people who disrespected and humiliated her Hmong mother and had no time or patience to try to understand her mother's halting English in stores and elsewhere.

I found it interesting that the teachers did not come up with the explanation so common for this kind of silence. They didn't attribute it to shyness, as it was clearly, in this case, something more profound.

The story is good for children and adults of all ages who come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English, and with their children who are comfortable in their own language but reluctant speaking English.

An educational book, with lovely illustrations, that has an important message for every reader.

The Rock in My Throat provides the reader with the experiences felt by new immigrants to the United States. This moving book immerses the reader into the life of a young girl and the struggles faced at within her new school and community after immigrating to the United States. This book should be on the reading list for any teacher education program. A book every educator should read whether or not they teach ESL students.

This is a beautiful and touching story based on the life of the author in which a young girl becomes a selective mute after the experiences her parents face as refugees in a new country. This was a really beautiful story and reading the author's notes about what she went through and why she wrote this book made this an even better read.

*Thanks Netgalley and Lerner Publishing Group, Carolrhoda Books ® for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

I've never read a book with Hmong rep before, and I think it's even better that it's a children's book. The Hmong are an ethnic minority residing in Southeast Asia. They don't have a country to call their own. This is doubly important as a book as it deals with immigration, language, and the selective muteness immigrants often deal with as they navigate new terrains.