I'm Ok, Paperback

Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature

Children's Literature

"So funny and heartfelt." --Gene Luen Yang, author of American Born Chinese
"I love the profound honesty of I'm Ok." --Newbery Medalist Linda Sue Park

Ok Lee is determined to find the perfect get-rich-quick scheme in this funny, uplifting novel for fans of Counting by 7s and Crenshaw.

Ok Lee knows it's his responsibility to help pay the bills. With his father gone and his mother working three jobs and still barely making ends meet, there's really no other choice. If only he could win the cash prize at the school talent contest But he can't sing or dance, and has no magic up his sleeves, so he tries the next best thing: a hair braiding business.

It's too bad the girls at school can't pay him much, and he's being befriended against his will by Mickey McDonald, an unusual girl with a larger-than-life personality. Then there's Asa Banks, the most popular boy in their grade, who's got it out for Ok.

But when the pushy deacon at their Korean church starts wooing Ok's mom, it's the last straw. Ok has to come up with an exit strategy--fast.

Born in Busan, Korea, Patti Kim immigrated to the United States on Christmas, 1974. Convinced at the age of five that she was a writer, she scribbled gibberish all over the pages of her mother's Korean-English dictionary and got in big trouble for it. But that didn't stop her from writing. The author of A Cab Called Reliable, Here I Am, and I'm Ok, Patti lives in University Park, Maryland, with her husband, two daughters, and a ferocious terrier.

Genevieve Santos is an illustrator born, raised, and living in San Jose, California, and sole proprietor of a small stationery company, Le Petit Elefant. Wanderlust got the best of her so she's traveled to thirty-one countries before turning thirty, sometimes backpacking, sometimes by camper van, sometimes on her own, but always with a sketchbook. Her love for animation started at a young age, and is what drives her to draw the slightest observations. She also has an insatiable weakness for ice cream.