Two years after her father is killed in a car accident, Emily moves with her mother and younger brother Navin to a faraway family home, once owned by her great-grandfather who disappeared decades ago. On the top floor of the neglected house, she finds a...
At 12, Paris Pan is the youngest of three in the peripatetic Pan family. Their latest address has them domiciled in teeny-tiny small town Sugar Lake, Oklahoma, where Paris has to start all over again at a new school. Unlike her older sister who has...
With a father in jail and a mother trying hard to keep her family together, San Lee's peripatetic home life is anything but zen. He's entering yet another new school as an outside eighth-grader – and moving from big town Houston to small-town Pennsylvania isn't...
Using the same simple metaphor he used in his previous bestselling If the World Were a Village, educational consultant David J. Smith presents America as a village of 100 (a far less intimidating number than the 306 million we’ve become!) to help kids (and anyone...
Wherever you are in the world, education is a key element to a more fulfilling life. Ruurs, herself an education specialist, celebrated the love of reading in her award-winning previous title, My Librarian Is a Camel: How Books Are Brought to Children Around the World....
Being a so-called 'normal' teenager for hapa Pakistani Londoner Bilqis SanGreal has never been an option. With an overbearing father who happens to be the Templar Master – even if many believe he murdered his beloved wife – Billi's destiny as the newest, youngest Knight is...
Through a collection of sparse free verse, Cheng captures a family in crisis. Ann, not yet 15, can't tell her friends that her mother just lost her breasts to cancer. But everyone seems to know already, asking after her mother and bringing chili with beans...
Not only will you be unable to put this down, you'll have to be careful to remember to breathe while reading this unforgettable debut novel written entirely in free verse. By age 10, Matt Pin has already had a harrowing life as a child of...
Being a Luddite, I don't play video games. Although I should confess that growing up in the 1970s (*gasp!*), ours was the first house in the neighborhood to get Pong, then Atari, then an Apple II. Contrary as I am, all that early technology probably...
Astro Boy, the little-boy-robot-who-could is probably Osamu Tezuka's most recognizable creation. Known as the "godfather of manga," Tezuka created Tetsuwan Atom (Mighty Atom) in Japan way back in 1951, and continued to present his manga adventures for decades. Renamed Astro Boy in the West, in 1963,...
For about-to-turn-sweet-16 Belly (no one calls her Isabel), summers at the beach is where her real life happens. The rest of the year pales to comings-and-goings of the large rambling seaside house, populated by two best-friend mothers and their two children each for the three...
With their father unable to find a job in Delhi, Asha, her older sister Reet, and their mother must go live with relatives in Calcutta while her father travels to New York in search of new opportunities. He hopefully promises that reunion is not far...
Eight stories feature eight teens from eight different countries coming of age during a time of uncertainty and tumult in their native Middle East countries. In the title story, young Amal of Baghdad, Iraq, must find the very best gift for her departing literature teacher even...
We listen to a lot of recorded books, shuttling the kids here and there. Every once in awhile, you get an unforgettable one like Edward's Eyes. It's not very long, but wow is it memorable, especially for parents! Jake and Edward are two especially bonded brothers...
Born in China and raised by loving adoptive parents in Dallas, teenager Cece Charles is on her way to China for a summer anthropology program in Xi’an, home of the legendary terra-cotta warriors. But in addition to seeking potential college credits, Cece is determined to...
City-girl Claire reluctantly moves to the country, where her parents open an all-organic bakery. During her first summer in the country, she saves her kidnapped mother with the help of her new best friend Jet. When the school year begins, she helps expose toxic dumping...
An informative look – underscored with lively photographs – at the history and future of Mount Everest, a sacred place for the locals, overtaken by adventurous tourism, and currently suffering the high price of so-called modern progress. Review: "In Celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month:...
The planting and harvesting of the core food product of Bali – rice – is an exercise in careful natural balance by the local farmers. But when the government gets involved and introduces genetically modified hybrid rice and chemical fertilizers, the perfect cycle breaks and...
Spunky and independent Minli can't bear to see her parents leading such harsh lives, especially her mother who is so discontented with the family's poverty that she can't even enjoy the glorious stories Minli's father regularly tells her. Minli is determined to change her family's...
Samir, a young Palestinian boy, must go to the "Jews' hospital" for a serious operation to save his injured knee. Having just lost his younger brother to Palestinian/Israeli crossfire, Samir is understandably anxious about entering what he sees as enemy territory. Waiting for the American doctor,...
