Wait for Me (Lib)(CD) [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

An Na (Author), Kim Mai Guest (Narrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Mina is the perfect daughter. Bound for Harvard, she’s Honor Society president and a straight-A student, even as she works at her family’s dry-cleaning store and helps care for her hearingimpaired little sister. On the outside, Mina does everything right. On the inside, Mina knows the truth. Her life is a lie. Then, the summer before her senior year, Mina meets someone to whom she cannot lie. Ysrael, a young migrant worker who dreams of becoming a musician, comes to work for her family, and asks Mina the one question that scares her the most. What does she want?

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up–The pack of lies about her academic achievement that Mina has told to satisfy her mother's high expectations (she has her heart set on her daughter going to Harvard) is unraveling as her senior year approaches. Jonathon Kim, a Stanford-bound teen and the son of her mother's best friend, has helped with the deception by forging Mina's report cards and backing up her many fictions. He asks too much of her, though, while Ysrael, the attractive new employee in the family cleaning business, encourages her to follow her own dreams–and him–to San Francisco. The tension in this Korean-American family is as uncomfortable as the heat and Santa Ana winds of the southern California setting. Mina's mother's bitterness over her lot in life and her neglect of Mina's hearing-impaired younger sister, Suna, have left the teen responsible. The story is told in two voices: first-person past tense for Mina and a distancing third-person present for Suna, just entering middle school and just beginning to find her own voice. The book is carefully crafted and beautifully written; even the punctuation emphasizes the fact that this is the younger generation's story. The adults speak without quotation marks. Na plays with her readers, suggesting in the prologue that the resolution of this story will come with a car crash, but instead makes Mina's decision about her future a logical outcome of her emotional growth. Accessible and wonderfully discussable, this story of family secrets and family love is a worthy successor to Na's A Step from Heaven (Front St, 2001).–Kathleen Isaacs, Towson University, MD
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Gr. 8-11. The author of the Printz Award Book A Step from Heaven(2001) tells another contemporary Korean American story of leaving home. This time, though, love is as powerful as the intense family drama. The focus is on high-school-senior Mina, trapped in the web of lies invented to satisfy her overbearing mom, Uhmma, who expects Mina to attend Harvard and escape the drudgery of their small-town dry-cleaning store. Mina's brilliant friend, Jonathan Kim, helps her cheat and steal. She uses him, but he thinks he loves her--and he eventually rapes her. Then Mexican immigrant Ysrael, a gifted musician on his way to San Francisco, comes to work in the store, and he and Mina fall passionately in love. Will she go with him and make a new life free of lies? Ysrael is too perfect, just as Uhmma is demonized, but both are shown from Mina's viewpoint, and it is her struggle with her secrets that is spellbinding. Alternating with Mina's first-person narrative are short vignettes from the perspective of Mina's deaf younger sister, who Mina protects. The conflicts of love, loyalty, and betrayal are the heart of the story--and they eventually show Mina her way. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Audio CD
• Publisher: Listening Library (June 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739335839
• ISBN-13: 978-0739335833
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,716,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sort of like a Korean Drama..., August 8, 2006

By 

Yuri (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wait for Me (Hardcover)

This novel wasn't all that great. It's basically about a girl who feels like her life is a "lie," because she's under pressure to get into Harvard. That is, until she meets this guy that shows her to... live for herself. The writing, while clearly intended to be deep and moving, I found appallingly melodramatic. The plot was standard, and it doesn't go very deep into the main character's feelings other than "I think my life is a lie"... that sort of thing.
It does make a point, however-- on how hard Asian-Americans work, what their high expectations are, and how competition with other asian american families works.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Wait for me, September 1, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Wait for Me (Hardcover)

The plot was weak in this book. I felt like this story wasn't developed enough and just not interesting enough to hold the reader's attention. It was very hard to understand the parts where Suna was narrating and overall i would not say the writing was particularily good. I would not recomend reading this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great price for a hard cover!, November 26, 2011

By 

Chanelle-LMS - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Wait for Me (Hardcover)

An Na's Wait For Me is a great book for helping teens think about moral decisions. I like to use this particular title with lower level readers because the Lexile level is very low (670L) while the content is thought provoking and relevant. The cover is appealing, too, so it's attractive to readers of all levels. The content is meant for older readers (I use this book with 8th grade and up). The main character is cheating and lying in order to live up to her mother's unrealistic expectations, and she also steals from her family's store and feels forced to be intimate with a classmate who has helped her cheat and covers for her later. Readers want to like her because she is the main character, but she is definitely flawed. That's why I like it so much. I also appreciated the fact that she is Korean-American in a modern setting; we have Korean students at our school who like to read about characters who share their ethnicity. Other students felt that the pressure they feel at home to succeed led them to empathize with the main character in Wait For Me despite the fact that they did not share her ethnicity, so the book has a broad appeal. The ending is weaker than the first three quarters of the book, but it's still very worthwhile reading for the moral dilemmas the character faces.

This particular purchase on Amazon was a great deal; the price was very low for a brand new hard cover book, and I believe I got 4 copies for the price of 3. They also qualified for free shipping when I went over the minimum, so I feel that I got a very good bargain!