Nicole: I’m super proud to be Taiwanese American, and so my stories feature characters who love being Taiwanese and love being American. I love writing stories that show the complexity and richness of our identities, and this time, I got to weave in some delicious food and possibly villainous celebrity chefs! Tracy: My books feature main characters who are Filipino American, like me! My latest middle grade, The Takeout, digs into what it means to belong, both in terms of where we’re from and where we are now, and how that meaning can be different for each person. How does your book celebrate your heritage? Chow- are excited to share their books and favorite AANHPI reads with you all! Three authors of SCBWI’s inaugural Out from the Margins Award (OMA) cohort –Tracy Badua, Nicole Chen, and Karen S. May is Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month, a time to celebrate our AANHPI community. Ages 8–12.By Tracy Badua, Nichole Chen, and Karen S. Concludes with an author's note and musical glossary. Auditory imagery, Harry Potter references, and nods to the Chinese American family's cultural expression ground the narrative, while chapter epigraphs define music theory metaphors.

Portraying variations on grief experiences amid a community slowly adjusting after a shared loss, Chow honors the tween protagonist's complexities and priorities as explored via Amie's candid voice.

Experiencing guilt and grief, and brimming with suppressed anger as Mom works to 'return to the everyday,' Amie feels unable to play her violin and distances herself from friends, struggling to create 'a new harmony' that will bridge relationship gaps and relieve inner cataclysms. When Ba-ba's cancer enters its final stages, affecting his personality, Amie feels out of sync with them both, and misses Ba-ba's last moments after she stays home from the hospital.

Violinist Amie Cheung, a sixth grader, is always in harmony with her Ba-ba, who lives by a creed of hope, believing that 'miracles happen every day,' and 'divisi' with her mother, who lives by another rhythm. Bolstered by an undercurrent of hope, Chow's unflinchingly raw debut explores the fraught relationship between a grieving daughter and mother during a father's decline and death from cancer.

Miracle by Karen S. Chow