Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All

New York City is the largest city in the state of New York. Measured by land area, it is one of the largest cities in the world—although with about 8,000,000 people, its population is much smaller than that of cities like Tokyo, Delhi, and Shanghai. New York is made up of five “boroughs”—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. These boroughs were once independent cities that came together in 1898 to form one city. Each borough is big enough to be its own county in New York State, and each has its own history and character.

When people think of New York City, they often think of skyscrapers, Wall Street, Broadway, and Times Square. These iconic parts of the city are all in the borough of Manhattan and many tourists visit them each year. There are a lot of exciting things to do, such as visiting museums, shopping, and eating at world-renowned restaurants. Many places are open at all hours of the day and night, earning New York one of its nicknames: The City That Never Sleeps.

Another nickname for New York City—one Miller uses in Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All—is The Big Apple. In the early 20th century, New York was famous for giving out large prizes at horse races that horse owners and jockeys referred to as “big apples.” Eventually, the name became associated with the city itself, suggesting that New York itself is a kind of prize for those who visit and live there.

Although it’s one of the world’s most expensive cities, Manhattan is home to a diverse population of people from varying racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds and identities. It contains people from almost every culture in the world working a huge variety of jobs. Like the New York City boroughs, each of its neighborhoods has its own history and character. Although Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All never explicitly states where in New York City Magnolia lives, Miller provides clues that she lives in Manhattan such as her proximity to the Empire State Building and the many tall buildings around her. Her parents run a laundromat, a common business in Manhattan, where the high prices of real estate make it challenging for most people to have washers and dryers in their apartments.

On one of her adventures, Magnolia travels to Chinatown—a famous neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower East Side—home to the largest concentration of Chinese and Chinese-descended people in the Western Hemisphere. Chinatown is a good example of how different each of Manhattan’s neighborhoods can be from one another. Chinatown is full of people who speak a variety of Asian languages and dialects, and many signs and notices are in these languages. The shops and restaurants reflect the cultures of the neighborhood’s residents, and people from the rest of Manhattan often come to Chinatown to shop for goods and food from a diverse pantheon of Asian cultures.

Magnolia Wu Unfolds it All joins a long tradition of books for young readers who use Manhattan as their setting. Other great middle-grade novels also set in Manhattan include Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Karina Yan Glaser’s The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, and David Barclay Moore’s The Stars Beneath Our Feet,