If you have a chance to see Children Of War, you can watch expert trauma counselors try to help bring healing to young people who have experienced atrocities in conflict.

American and Vietnamese characters alike leap to life through the voice and eyes of a tenyearold girl-a protagonist so strong, loving, and vivid I longed to hand her a wedge of freshly cut papaya.

There weren't too many books featuring other cultures and countries when I was growing up as an immigrant kid here in the States.

I learned to read when I was three, so I skipped right over picture books and didn't learn to appreciate art in books until much later.

I hope and pray that despite an unhealed past full of atrocities and deep divisions in the present, God can and will make "the distant near" and a "brother of the stranger" in America's future.

Keep reading and writing, learn how to revise, and push through rejections. My second book, Monsoon Summer, was rejected over 20 times and finally came out 11 years after my first book! I'm glad I didn't give up. Neither should you.

America inevitably "brings the distant near" because apart from members of the Native Nations, all of us originated in faraway places. Sadly, proximity within the United States doesn't automatically generate friendship. But if we choose to cross borders that may at first bring discomfort and open our hearts to those who seem like strangers, I believe that we can be transformed and united as individuals, families, communities, and even as a country.