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Three stories told, three countries represented, and three lives profiled.  Despite the years that separate them, the trinity of humanity featured in Alan Gratz’s novel Refugee experience remarkable and horrifying similarities with intersecting conclusions. Imagine feeling unwanted, dirty, and illegal.   Imagine hearing sirens, soldiers, shouting, gunfire, breaking glass, and screams daily.  Imagine thinking that if you want to live, you have to leave your homeland and all that is familiar.  These are the realities of three refugees and their families: Josef Landau, a barely thirteen Jewish boy living in Germany in 1939 under the reign of Adolph Hitler; Isabel Fernandez, a pre-teen Cuban citizen enduringRead More →

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As Jing turns eleven, she realizes that the age is “like an age of breakthroughs – tea-drying for the first time, my first offering to the guardian, visiting a new city, getting a new hanfu…new adventure, new experiences” (30). What seems like an exciting new period of her life quickly turns into her greatest fear, though. Jing’s widowed Aunt Mei has led the family since the death of Jing’s mother, and because of low resources, she convinces Jing’s father that it is time for Jing to get married. Jing is spirited enough to fight back against the plan to sell her to a big cityRead More →

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Sixth grader Molly Cooke and her twelve-year-old brother Addison—who enjoys inadvisable adventures and has a “stunning capacity for getting himself into trouble” (60)—attend Theodore Roosevelt Middle School in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  Because they are Cookes born into a long line of archeologists, they have grown up on archaeology digs and in museums.  Consequently, Addison Cooke and the Treasure of the Incas by Jonathan W. Stokes is rich with geography lessons, historical allusions, and opportunities to learn about cultural artifacts. When the tweens’ Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel get kidnapped by treasure hunters and thieves, Addison calls a Code Blue—a mission of theRead More →

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Inspired by ancient Chinese folklore and woven with both adventure and villainy, When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin is a lyrical, well-told tale, complete with full-color illustrations.  It is the tale of Pinmei, a shy girl whose words freeze in her throat at the sight of anyone unfamiliar, and of Yishan, a boy who often forgets he is young and speaks with a confidence and vehemence that belie his youth. Both Pinmei and Yishan live on a remote mountain, a place of solitude.  But the tranquility of their lives is shattered when soldiers come and capture Amah, Pinmei’s grandmother, who is the famous storyteller.  People areRead More →

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Just as an apple, cut and cored, cannot be put back together, Nella Sabatini–a young Italian Catholic girl–feels undone, confused, and incomplete.  Restless with desire for things her parents cannot afford, for popularity that evades her, and for a sense of peace and quiet that is in short supply with a houseful of “barbarian brothers” and a grandmother who is demanding and grumpy, “ancient and ignorant,” Nella aches for answers to life’s toughest questions and difficult dilemmas.  With happy moments so ephemeral, she wishes, “If only you could store up happiness. . . . Dig a happiness hole, or keep a happiness piggy bank, savingRead More →

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Written by daughter of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, The Hero Two Doors Down by Sharon Robinson, recounts the historical fiction tale of tumultuous times of global, racial, cultural, and religious unrest in the late 1940s.  Because of its inspirational message about the need to depend on faith, family, and friends during the worst of times, contemporary readers will find this story of friendship and unity especially relevant as Martin Luther King, Junior’s 87th birthday approaches. In 1948, Steven Satlow is eight years old, and a train ride to Ebbets Field costs five cents each way.  Because Steve is the shortest kid in his class andRead More →

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The quiet calm of the wait and the comfort of savory smells make cooking a favorite activity for Maddy, the protagonist in Jewell Parker Rhodes’ recent release, Bayou Magic.  Although she was born Madison Isabelle Lavalier Johnson, Maddy is often called Bird Bones because she is small and thin.  At ten years old, Maddy is not yet comfortable in her own skin, and she wonders why she sees the world differently than her four sisters do. Maddy prefers listening, watching, and dreaming.  Now it’s her turn to have a bayou summer, and her sisters, who each took their turn, warn her of all the drawbacksRead More →

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Debut author Stacey Lee‘s Under a Painted Sky lyrically intertwines aspects of America’s Western expansion that are rarely, if ever, explored.  Into the very real world of the California Gold Rush, the pioneers’ homesteading journeys  along the Oregon Trail, and the lawlessness of the “Wild West“, Lee creates a powerfully moving story of friendship, race and gender politics, and above all, courage and faith.  It’s a treat to spend time with a writer who takes pains to research and then accurately represent, with beautiful, vivid prose, a world gone by and in so doing, make it vibrant, interesting, and resonant. 15 year old Chinese AmericanRead More →

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Legendary comic book writer Stan Lee‘s first prose novel, Convergence, is going to fly off your shelves.   A mismatched group of regular teens has suddenly been imbued with mystical ancient powers, linked to the animals of the Chinese zodiac.   At the center is 14 year old Chinese American Steven Lee, who has never really felt like he fits in anywhere and more than anything, wishes he could be a hero.  On a school trip to Hong Kong, Steven stumbles into an underground cavern where he’s unwittingly caught up in an energy convergence that gives him the deadly powers of the Tiger.  Steven’s power comesRead More →