Escape from Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy

Author: Andrea Warren

At the end of the Vietnam War, an eight-year-old "Amerasian" boy named Long flees his country and finds a loving home with an adoptive family in Ohio. The author recounts the story of Long's life-from his birth and early childhood, shadowed by his father's abandonment and his mother's suicide- to boyhood in Saigon with a loving but struggling grandmother who eventually makes the agonizing decision to put him up for adoption. Long, now age nine, becomes part of Operation Babylift, the US- coordinated effort that evacuated more than 2,000 children from Saigon in just three days in 1975. This photo-essay from Long's emotional point of view is interspersed with just the right amount of history. Escape is ideal for middle and upper grade classrooms studying various immigration themes including lost heritage, poverty, separation and family relations.

Escape from Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy

Year Released: 2004

Grades 5-12