Paper Daughter by Jeanette Ingold

Ingold, Jeanette Paper Daughter, 204 p. Houghton Mifflin, 2010.  $17.00.  Content: G.  Maggie, Chen, sixteen, is determined to fulfill her summer internship at the Seattle Herald even though her father was killed in a hit-and-run just a few weeks earlier.  As she sorts through the papers he has left behind, she finds that the history she thought her family had was probably based on a lie.  As she works on the paper she discovers another mystery, one that may or may not be related to her father’s death.  Maggie feels adrift, rootless, and is determined to solve both mysteries – who is her family actually and was her dad involved in something illegal.  Interspersed with a much older background story involving Chinese immigrants and the Exclusion Era laws from the early 1900’s.  I think this is Ingold’s best novel.  This historic time period is a perfect subject to engage the attention of today’s students – I would love to teach this in an elementary or 7^th grade classroom.  EL, MS – ESSENTIAL. Cindy, Library Teacher.