“A refreshing reminder of the hurdles newcomers to this country still face and how many defy the odds to overcome them,” writes The New York Times , this inspiring work of narrative journalism recounts a year in the life at the International High School at Prospect Heights. Some walked across deserts and mountains to get here. One arrived after escaping in a suitcase. And others won’t say how they got here. These are “the new kids”: new to America and all the routines and rituals of an American high school, from lonely first days to prom. They attend Brooklyn’s International High School at Prospect Heights, where all the students are recent immigrants learning English. Together, they come from more than forty-five countries and speak more than twenty-eight languages. An inspiring work of narrative journalism, The New Kids chronicles a year in the lives of teenage newcomers who are at once ordinary and extraordinary in their paths to the American Dream. Hauser’s unforgettable portraits include Jessica, kicked out of her father’s home just days after arriving from China; Ngawang, who spent twenty-four hours folded up in a suitcase to escape Tibet; Mohamed, a diamond miner’s son from Sierra Leone whose past is shrouded in mystery; and Chit Su, a Burmese refugee who is the only person to speak her language in the entire school. The students deal with enormous obstacles: traumas and wars in their native countries that haunt them, and pressures from their cultures to marry or to drop out and go to work. They aren’t just jostling for their places in the high school pecking order—they are carving out new lives for themselves in America. A People Magazine "Great Read" "The stories of these kids are simply astonishing." -- Talk of the Nation, NPR "A refreshing reminder of the hurdles newcomers to this country still face and how many defy the odds to overcome them." -- The New York Times "Brooke Hauser, who spent a year following members of the senior class, delivers a rich, extraordinarily moving account of the challenges they met--and the many ways in which kids are the same the world over." -- Parade Magazine Brooke Hauser has written for The New York Times , Los Angeles Times , and Allure , among other publications. She lives in western Massachusetts. The New Kids Chit Su’s First Day Everybody has The Outfit—the outfit they bought for America. The students who have lived in the country for longer have learned how to blend in better, disappearing in brand-name sneakers and low-riding jeans. But each September on the first day of school, the new kids are easy to spot. Some arrive in their native dress, like the Bangladeshi girls in colorful shalwar kameez, or the African boy who walked the halls in goatskin sandals lined with bristly hair. Others try to fit in and fail, like the boy who came from a country that no one had heard of. He wanted American blue jeans but settled for a pair hand-sewn by his uncle instead. Then there are the kids who dress the part of model student, a few in starched shirts and slacks still wrinkled from the plane, as if they were headed to an immigration interview instead of first period. One Yemeni boy showed up in a business suit, and a Haitian freshman carried a backpack filled with books that weren’t on any syllabus, his notebook thin from all the used pages torn out. Still, he was better off than the refugees who seem to arrive with nothing at all. Everyone remembers the Burmese sisters who wore flip-flops through the first winter snow. Sitting behind a cluttered desk in her office on the fourth day of school, Dariana Castro examines the new girl from behind cat’s-eye glasses. Somehow, Student No. 219870508 got it almost right. Today is her first day at the International High School at Prospect Heights, a Brooklyn public school that teaches English to new immigrants, but at least by appearances she could be any girl entering the ninth grade at any high school in any city or small town across America. She has silky brown hair, which is half up, and small eyes, which are cast down at the floor. Her lips are glossed and her nails polished, but that doesn’t stop her from nibbling on them. She wears brand-new blue jeans (factory made), a black-and-red Mead backpack, and a T-shirt the fluorescent-green color of Nickelodeon slime. Her clothes fit too well to be hand-me-downs, and they leave no trace of a foreign country. It’s as if someone undressed a mannequin in the back-to-school display in the tween department of Target, and re-created the ensemble on her. “What’s your name?” Dariana asks. “Chit Su,” the girl says, twisting a flower-shaped ruby ring on her finger. “Cheet Sue,” Dariana repeats carefully. Cradling a phone receiver to her ear, she motions for the girl to take a seat. Especially during the first week of school, it’s rare that an extra chair is available. Throughout the day, a steady tide of visitors flows into this air-conditioned room, loc