In 1935, two unlikely tweens are connected across the Atlantic as assigned – albeit initially unwilling – pen pals. Made to write a full page to Charlie after dismissing her because she's a girl, Alex soon succumbs to her epistolary charms; their letters continue for...
Fan Fiction, 50 Years Later Almost two decades have passed since Linda Sue Park became the first Korean American – and only the second Asian American – to win the Newbery Medal, in 2002 for A Single Shard. She's since published dozens of titles (Gondra's Treasure; Forest of...
For Allie Abraham, "hiding is easy: reddish-blond hair, pale skin, hazel eyes," in other words – white. That she looks "textbook Circassian…from the Caucasus region. (Hey, they don't call it Caucasian for nothing)," is her ethnic inheritance from her immigrant Circassian Jordanian history professor father....
*STARRED REVIEW British TV-film-stage-even-video-games-actor/comedian/novelist Stephen Fry is a consummate storyteller. Yes, he’s got multiple bestsellers on the page, including this latest: choosing from the godly Greek pantheon certainly provided divine inspiration, replete with the utmost in family dysfunction including bed-hopping (although, who needs beds?!), Sisyphean feats...
Frank Li witnessed his older sister be perfect: she got into Harvard, then Harvard Law, then graduated into an enviably lucrative career. For their Korean immigrant parents, Hanna could do no wrong – until she did: She fell in love with a non-Korean ...
Laura Ruby’s (Bone Gap, 2015) narrator – her name eventually revealed as Pearl – is dead. Pearl’s primary object of attention is not: Frankie, who’s 14 in 1941, is a “half orphan” relegated to a Chicago orphanage with her siblings by their living Italian immigrant father,...
*STARRED REVIEW Already an international bestseller, television scriptwriter Cho Nam-Joo’s debut novel has been credited with helping to “launch Korea’s new feminist movement.” The fact that gender inequity is insidiously pervasive throughout the world will guarantee that this tale has immediate resonance, and its smoothly accessible,...
b, Book, and Me by Kim Sagwa and translated by Sunhee Jeong Although this book is set in a coastal suburb outside Seoul, the cycle of neglect by stressed or careless adults can and does happen anywhere. In such an all-too-familiarly indifferent environment, lauded Korean writer...
These United States are not quite a quarter-millennium old, but “Hispanic history in regions that are now called the United States spans more than five centuries,” Margarita Engle reminds in her essential opening historical note. With the island’s 15th-century colonization, “the history of the modern...
Peter Berkrot is not a Japanese speaker – and somehow, he went into the recording studio without pronunciation guidance, an aural detail that unfortunately mars an otherwise stellar presentation of Christian Kiefer’s (Infinite Tides) stunning, slim third novel. With his folksy, inviting delivery, Berkrot magnetically lures...
What began as a family affair – Jeed Saddy made her aural debut with her sister-in-law’s memoir, First Comes Marriage – has turned into a promising bookish career: in just a few months, Saddy’s already onto her third narrating credit. Her versatile characterizations highlight the intertwined...
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom opens with definitions of two seemingly unrelated, yet brilliantly paired, words: palimpsest, “a very old text or document in which writing has been removed and covered or replaced by new writing,” and adoption, “the act of legally taking a child to be taken...
"This novel is a romp," Abigail Hing Wen promises (and delivers!) about Loveboat, Taipei. The Loveboat, she explains in her opening note to readers, is the popular name for Chien Tan, a real-life Taiwanese summer language program aimed at diasporic teens, with a reputation for...
Brown lives get overlooked, trampled, dismissed, and destroyed in Matt Mendez’s searing YA debut, set in his El Paso, Texas hometown. Timothy Andrés Pabon – his voice aptly mimicking a teen who’s not quite fully mature – opens in “Chapter Juan” as should-be high school...
During summer 2005, when “the American war was sort of dozing,” 12-year-old Marwand, his brother, and mother arrived in Logar, Afghanistan to visit extended family. The six years since Marwand’s last visit from the U.S. isn’t enough for Budabash – more wolf than dog –...
He’s been called “Twitter Monk” and “mega-Monk” for his million-plus followers. That his Berkeley/Harvard Divinity Master’s/Princeton PhD-pedigree plus seven years professor-ing at Hampshire College led him to become a world-famous Buddhist monk seems an unlikely path. Yet his success only spreads with Imperfect, his follow-up to...
*STARRED REVIEW Two star-crossed seniors just want to dance together at prom. Emma lives with her grandmother since her parents rejected her when she came out, but the bullying at school has never stopped. She and student council president Alyssa are in love, but Alyssa’s fear of...
*STARRED REVIEW Being born on the wrong side of the wall means Dani’s parents took impossible risks to give her every opportunity for a better life. Despite her indigent origins, well-forged documents granted Dani access to the elite Medio School for Girls; as top graduate, Dani’s...
*STARRED REVIEW Sure, the book is great. But the audio? It’s some sort of spectacular. In October 2018, bestselling Jarrett J. Krosoczka debuted his graphic memoir – about being raised by his grandparents when his single mother’s heroin addiction made her an unreliable parent; it was...
*STARRED REVIEW Although set in a coastal suburb outside Seoul, the cycle of neglect by stressed or careless adults can and does happen anywhere. In such an all-too-familiarly indifferent environment, lauded Korean writer Kim Sagwa (Mina, 2018) introduces three misfits: two teen girls and a socially-outcast,...
