Monsoon Summer By Mitali Perkins

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Review by Allison Martin

In this book for middle school age children, teenage Jasmine Gardner travels to India with her parents and younger brother to volunteer for the summer in an Indian orphanage. With regret, Jasmine leaves behind her boyfriend, school friends and fledgling business to go with her family. Leaving her boyfriend proves the most difficult as she has just begun to realize how much she cares about him, and wonders how he feels back in California.

While her family seems to adjust to their new life quickly, Jasmine doesn't quite seem to fit in. She is torn between her impulses to help, and the concern that she can not measure up.

To complicate matters slightly, her mother was adopted from India and in on an emotional journey herself. Readers will be pleased to know that this subtext of adoption is explored positively, with supportive tones both for the adoptive family and the mother's emotional ties to her birth.

The orphanage itself seems to be immaculate; while poor, the children are happy and well cared for. But, hanging over them is their long term placement in society when they leave the orphanage. In the end Jasmine's practical business bent proves useful, and becomes the vehicle for her self acceptance, before she returns to her boyfriend and life in California.

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