Outrun the Moon

Fifteen-year-old Mercy Wong, a Chinese-American girl living in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1906, struggles to find a way to attend a private school for rich, white girls. As the only non-Caucasian student she has difficulty fitting in and when things appear at their worst, an earthquake strikes the city, destroying the school and Chinatown, and Mercy and the other girls must fight to survive. This engaging historical novel for grades 8-10 is character-driven and the focus is on their journey rather than the earthquake itself. Appropriate for literature circles, the novel deals with racism, exclusion, being judged, struggling to fit in, survival, and overcoming obstacles.