Betty C. Tang: Hi, this is Betty C. Tang and I'm the author and illustrator of the graphic novel Parachute Kids. So, imagine you are on a dream vacation in America, and at the end of it, your parents tell you that you are here to stay, but they are going home. So, this is the situation the three siblings of my book suddenly find themselves in.

A new culture, new language, new schools, trying to make new friends. And all the while trying to learn to do the stuff mom always did, like cooking, grocery shopping, and paying the bills. This was also the situation my siblings and I suddenly find ourselves many years ago, for we were parachute kids, too.

The reason why my parents brought us here was, more or less, the same reason the parents in my book gave. The fear of war. Back in 1979, the United States changed its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan to China and many Taiwanese feared China would invade.

So, as a result, many parents made the difficult decision and dropped their kids off with friends or relatives, and sometimes even paid caregivers in foreign countries, like in the U. S., while they stayed behind to work in order to provide for them.

Another related reason why many parents made this choice was, at the time, the military service age for boys was 14. It was mandatory, which meant you could no longer leave Taiwan until you served. So, you can imagine, under the threat of war when many parents scrambled to send their sons out of the country.

There were so many of us that the Asian community started to call us parachute kids because we were dropped off. The reason why most people outside the community has never heard of the term because most parachute kids came undocumented, meaning they're not legally allowed to be in the country. So, you can imagine they want to stay under the radar.

I still remember my first days upon arrival in America, all the new experiences. One of the things I vividly remember, and it's something I included in the book, was my family being pulled into the immigration office upon arrival at LAX, the airport, because we had some issues with our visas, although the issue wasn't as trivial as the one in the book.

Then, after everything was sorted out, a family friend picked us up and took us to our first American restaurant. I think it was IHOP, I'm not sure. But the reason why I think it is IHOP is because I had my first pancakes. My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets at seeing the tall stack. I remember wondering, how could any one person eat this much food?

So, now I'm going to switch gears and talk about the art. I would like to talk about page nine of Parachute Kids. It is a spread that I chose to do five photographs. On this page, there's the first photo is of Feng-Li and Mickey Mouse at Disneyland because Mickey Mouse is her idol. She wants to see him really badly and meet him and so that's the first photograph.

The second photograph on the spread is her sister standing before the Hollywood sign. The third photograph is of them on the hop-on, hop-off bus, which is like a touristy bus that would drive you around in the city to see all the popular destinations. So, on the bus, there are the three siblings and her brother is taking a lot of photos.

The fourth photograph on the page is her parents screaming, shocked at the sudden appearance of Jaws at Universal Studio to a ride. And the last photo is all the entire family standing in front of the Grauman's Chinese Theater. By doing these five photographs, it allows me visually to show the passage of time without having to do pages and pages of written words.