# Inside Out & Back Again

**Author:** Thanhha Lai
**Lexile:** 800L
**Grade range:** Grades 4–8
**Age range:** 9–13
**First published:** 2011
**Page count:** 262
**Genre:** Middle Grade Verse Novel / Historical Fiction
**ISBN-13:** `9780061962790`
**ISBN-10:** `0061962791`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/inside-out-and-back-again
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

In free-verse poems spanning one year, ten-year-old Hà flees Saigon with her family at the close of the Vietnam War and remakes her life in Alabama. Drawing on Thanhha Lai's own childhood, the novel captures the disorientation of displacement, a new language, and the slow work of belonging. A Newbery Honor book and National Book Award winner, it is widely assigned in grades 4-8 for its accessible verse and immigrant-experience themes.

## Themes

- immigration
- refugees
- resilience
- family
- displacement

## Content notes

- war
- displacement

## Where this book is assigned

### National Book Award for Young People's Literature

- **recommended** · 4th grade — [source: National Book Award for Young People's Literature winners (National Book Foundation), via Wikipedia — 2011 winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Book_Award_for_Young_People%27s_Literature)
- **recommended** · 5th grade — [source: National Book Award for Young People's Literature winners (National Book Foundation), via Wikipedia — 2011 winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Book_Award_for_Young_People%27s_Literature)
- **recommended** · 6th grade — [source: National Book Award for Young People's Literature winners (National Book Foundation), via Wikipedia — 2011 winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Book_Award_for_Young_People%27s_Literature)
- **recommended** · 7th grade — [source: National Book Award for Young People's Literature winners (National Book Foundation), via Wikipedia — 2011 winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Book_Award_for_Young_People%27s_Literature)
- **recommended** · 8th grade — [source: National Book Award for Young People's Literature winners (National Book Foundation), via Wikipedia — 2011 winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Book_Award_for_Young_People%27s_Literature)

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