BookDragon Audience

Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story by Ari Folman and David Polonsky

10 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Israeli, Jewish, Lebanese, Memoir, Palestinian, Young Adult Readers

No, I have not seen the film version of this title. The book is brutal enough on flat pages. I think moving pictures just might send me over the edge. That said, this riveting, nightmarish title should be required reading for anyone contemplating going to...

T4: A Novel by Ann Clare LeZotte

09 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in European, Fiction, Jewish, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

In just over a hundred pages of sparse, haunting verse, LeZotte illuminates a part of the Holocaust tragedy that takes up little shelf space in libraries today: the organized mass murder of mentally ill and physically challenged people, as well as the massacre of European...

The Year of the Tiger: Tales from the Chinese Zodiac by Oliver Chin, illustrated by Justin Roth

06 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Fiction

Is is already time to start thinking about the new year? Come 2010, we'll all be celebrating the year of my son ...

The New Sun by Taro Yashima

05 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

What an amazing, unique, and LUCKY find! First published in 1943 by one of the oldest U.S. publishers, Henry Holt and Company, and in spite of excellent reviews plus a multi-year marketing campaign by both publisher and an early publicist who worked to get the...

A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts by Ying Chang Compestine

04 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

Even though the back of the galley says Compestine's latest title is for "Ages 12 and up," I'd definitely recommend saving it for much older readers. These are some of the most realistically gruesome tales outside of Halloween, not to mention dealing with more adult...

Monster (vols. 15-18) by Naoki Urasawa, English adaptation by Agnes Yoshida, translated by Satch Watanabe and Hiroki Shirota (vol. 15), Satch Watanabe (vol. 16), Reina Maruyama (vol. 17), Satoki Yamada (vol. 18)

03 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Another warning: The body count is staggering by series' end. While most are bad guys, or anonymous innocent bystanders (who are disturbing enough to see splattered across so many pages), the ONE that breaks your heart ...

Monster (vols. 11-14) by Naoki Urasawa, English adaptation by Agnes Yoshida, translated by Satch Watanabe (vol. 11), Hiroki Shirota (vol. 12), Hirotaka Takiya (vol. 13), Nobu Yamada and Masaru Noma (vol. 14)

02 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Just in case you need a refresher, every volume from 11 until the final 18 now opens with a summary and who's who ...

In the City by the Sea by Kamila Shamsie

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Pakistani, South Asian

Kamila Shamsie's debut novel is now the same age as her first protagonist, 11-year-old Hasan, the only child of a lauded artist and a once powerful lawyer. The trio live surrounded by extended family and friends in 'the city by the sea' of Karachi, Pakistan....

Animals Marco Polo Saw: An Adventure on the Silk Road by Sandra Markle, illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini

29 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Chinese, European, Middle Grade Readers, Mongolian, Nonfiction

Marco Polo sure got around in his time, way back in the 13th century! And what a great way to show our instant-access, Web-addicted kids just how incredible the Polo family's adventures were – for any generation! The latest in Chronicle Books' (that great indie San...

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (vols. 5-9) by Eiji Otsuka, art by Housui Yamazaki, translated by Toshifumi Yoshida (Taylor Engel and Toshifumi Yoshida, vol. 7), edited by Carl Gustav Horn

28 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation

It's been almost two years since I first discovered this series (vols. 1-4) and they certainly haven't lost any of their chilling zing! I don't remember that they came with a "Parental Advisory | Explicit Content" warning sticker before, but they certainly do now, so...

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

28 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Armenian American, Audio, Fiction, Turkish

Even before this book hit U.S. shelves, French-born Turkish author Elif Shafak was charged with insulting "Turkishness" in violation of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code because one of her characters refers to the large-scale massacre of Armenians that began in 1915 in Turkey as...

20th Century Boys (vol. 05) by Naoki Urasawa, with the cooperation of Takashi Nagasaki, English adaptation by Akemi Wegmüller

27 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Full disclosure: I pre-ordered all the scheduled next volumes for this series, too. Anything that has "Urasawa" on the cover, I'll be greedily reading ...

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit (vol. 2) by Motoro Mase, translated by John Werry, English adaptation by Kristina Blachere

27 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

I have volumes 3 and 4 of Ikigami already pre-ordered (although not coming soon enough, I might add) so that ought to tell you I'm clearly hooked on this series. I also wish they were longer, too, but that's a groupie talking ...

The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal, translated by Frank Wynne

26 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, Translation

Prominently noted on the cover as "The first Arab novel to confront the Holocaust" and banned in the author's native Algeria, The German Mujahid is also based on a true story, making it an even more disturbing, striking read. To add to its authenticity, the novel...

Monster (vols. 6-10) by Naoki Urasawa, English adaptation by Agnes Yoshida, translated by Noriko Watanabe (vol. 6), Masataka Kakiya (vol. 7), Juri Nozaki (vol. 8), Satch Watanabe (vol. 9), and Sumiko Katsura (vol. 10)

25 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Just like addictive junk food (not that I would know, ahem!), you can't read just one volume of Monster. You start one, you have to immediately finish all the ones you can get your hands on. Too bad I ordered only five at a time...

I Am Jack by Susanne Gervay, illustrated by Cathy Wilcox

24 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Australian, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific

"Did you know that thirty percent of children in American schools are either bullied, or bully other kids?" asks award-winning Australian author Susanne Gervay in her "Author's Note" for the first U.S. edition of her already bestselling novel. Inspired by her own son Jack's experiences...

Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie

23 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Pakistani, South Asian

First an interruption: I learned a very entertaining meaning for a certain common(-ish) word on the first page of Shamsie's second novel: 'bugaboo.' "It's a word that demands to be said out loud," writes Shamsie, "particularly among bilingual Pakistanis who recognize its resemblance to 'baghal...

The Silence of God and Other Plays by Catherine Filloux

23 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian, Drama/Theater, Jewish, Nonethnic-specific, Southeast Asian, Turkish

Playwright Catherine (pronounced Ka-treen) Filloux has built her dramatic reputation on giving voice to lost, overlooked souls. In Lemkin's House, Filloux presents the struggle of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish American lawyer whom she refers to as her "historical soulmate," a man who coined the term "genocide"...

The North Star by Peter H. Reynolds

22 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers

Picking up a Peter H. Reynolds book is always transporting. "What wondrous things books can be," he writes in a lovely letter-as-introduction in his new edition to his 1977 classic, The North Star. "My favorites are the ones that move me – to laughter, to...

Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship by Denise Chong [in Christian Science Monitor]

21 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese, Nonfiction, Repost

Denise Chong has built an award-winning career capturing ordinary people living extraordinary lives. The Concubine’s Children (1994) told of her own family’s fractured journey from China to Canada and The Girl in the Picture (2000) detailed the harrowing story of the young girl whose screaming,...