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After reading Dia's Story Cloth, I felt inspired by the bravery of the Hyong people and how they preserved times of war and civil unrest within their country. I also enjoyed the detail of the illustrations that captured the historical events of the time and showed the precision that went into creating these cloths. Dia's family was able to leave Thailand because her father bravely fought with the American army against the Communist army. However, she and her family kept the importance of the story cloths alive by educating their families. I found it inspiring that Dia returned to Thailand to work with refugee families. I thought that the story didn't go into as much detail as I would have liked, so I appreciated the excerpt at the end that gave more information and historical accounts. Overall, I thought this book had a great message and accomplished the goal of educating readers about the Hyong history and their intricate cloth work. ( )

Beautiful, gentle introduction to the Hmong people and their history. The story is similar to other refugee stories, but the illustrations (all come from a Hmong story cloth) are breathtaking and add authenticity and emotion to the author's voice. Recommended! ( )

This non-fiction book is about a young lady, Dia, from the mountains of Laos and her struggles to get to the Land of The Free, America. She talks about the Hmong Culture and how it emigrated from China to different Asian Countries because China had originally wanted to change the Hmong Culture and the Hmong people would not have it. The Hmong people emigrated to different Asian Countries; Laos, Thailand, Burma, to continue their culture the way they wanted too. Dia's family in particular emigrated to Laos, where her family built a house made out of wood and bamboo. They would walk 2 hours away to farm for survival and walk 2 hours back to get home. During this time, their village was in the middle of a warfare between America and Communists. In order to avoid the war, Dia's family had to cross the Mekong River where multiple lives of Hmong people died trying to cross. When Dia and her family were safely evacuated over to American soil, she was 15 years old and did not know any English at all. This book was very emotional and inspiring. It showed a lot of interesting facts of the Hmong Culture and an overview of one's journey to the United States. The illustrations were paintings from the Hmong Cloth that her uncle had sewed. The Hmong Cloth is a hand-sewn cloth, the illustrations on the cloth tells a story. As the illustrations in this book, the Hmong Cloth was closely copied and drawn into the book. The text of the book is long but it is also not hard to understand. This book enriches the Hmong Culture and the journey Dia and her family had to go through for freedom. ( )

In my opinion, this was a very informational book. It told us the story of the Hmong refugees and their journey from china to Thailand and for some, America. I like that each of the illustrations was part of the story cloth. On each written page of the book, there was picture page next to it with the section of the corresponding story clothe on it. I also liked that the writing was concise but provided enough information to help the readers understand. For example, it says “Sometimes we hid in the forest, or in caves until the communist soldiers left). However, I didn’t like that the sections weren’t labeled. I wasn’t sure which soldiers were part of the communist regime and which soldiers were part of the loyalist army. ( )