By the time I got to college, the Michael Dorris/Louise Erdrich union was already legendary. Dorris was the founder of Dartmouth's Native American Studies department – might I add, how ironic that took 200+ years after the school was created in 1769 "for the education and...
When the "big one" (for me) hit on October 17, 1989 at 5:04 p.m., I was alone in our house, which sat on Blueberry Hill near the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains. I was barely a few miles from the epicenter of the 7.1...
"I hope my new family is the best family the world," Carlota wishes on her last night in the orphanage. Unable to sleep, she imagines what her new life might be like ...
Take notice: this is every parent's worst nightmare come true. Without warning, 15-year-old Megumi disappears, seemingly without a trace. Her mother has no idea why she might have left or where she might be ...
First reaction: WOWOWOWOWOW! What a fabulous first manga for the new year. Indeed, nothing is simple about this all-in-one-volume story ...
The eponymous Arzee is a diminutive young man in his late 20s living with his mother and younger brother in crowded Bombay, swaggeringly looking forward to the near future. In spite of the difficulties he's faced (much of which he blames on his size), he's convinced his life...
First things first: Indu Sundaresan’s only (thus far) short story collection (she’s best known for her lengthy historical novels, The Twentieth Wife and Feast of Roses) is definitely an effective read. Many of the stories make you think beyond your immediate world as they temporarily...
One Halloween night when Anne Greves is 16, she goes with older friends to a jazz club and falls in love for the first time in her young life. Serey is an older man, already in his 20s, a musician, who has already lived too...
Samuel Polk is 16, athletic, has good friends, and lives in a small southern town in Georgia. He tells everyone he's gotten over his mother's sudden death a year ago. While his relationship with his father isn't the closest, they've managed to establish a daily...
Cynthia Kadohata – who won the top American children's book honor, the Newbery Medal, in 2005 for her debut middle-grade title, Kira-Kira –returns with a heartbreaking story about a young Vietnamese boy and his special relationship with the elephant in his charge. High in the central highlands of war-torn...
Andy Nguyen is most definitely Australian, not Vietnamese. And yet his father insists they're going "home" to Vietnam, somewhere Andy has never been. Andy's Dad is Viet Kieu, a name given to Vietnamese-born immigrants who live in other countries around the world. Returning Viet Kieu...
Winner of Le Prix Goncourt 2008, considered France's highest literary honor, this disturbingly powerful slim volume gives voice to the too-many silenced women living "[s]omewhere in Afghanistan or elsewhere." Written almost like a dramatic play script complete with what read like stage directions – not...
Slim and gorgeous, Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, couldn't be more different from the 10-volume, powerfully resonating Barefoot Gen series in scope and style. But don't let its whimsical beauty fool you for a moment ...
Strong, no-nonsense, independent Kanna takes center stage again in volume 06 (that's her in color on the cover), in a world shrouded by the choking control of the all-powerful Friends. When bumbling Detective Chono comes looking for drag queen Britney, Kanna know she's got to...
A Quartet of Unsalable Gems: Madras Press Debuts Series One A modern eco-fable about an almost-royal swan and just-a-common-bluebird couple whose lives intersect with a miner and a logger who turn away from their destructive careers… a contemporary fairy tale about a witch with one heck...
Although the second volume of Ōoku, a recently introduced (in translation) gender-bender series, this latest could definitely read as a stand-alone love story. And quite a unique and memorable one at that! The series' premise is that in an alternative history of premodern Edo Japan, the mysterious...
Yuki Tachibana (whose first name means 'snow,' and last name means 'standing flower') is not your average first-grader. He draws strange pictures on his desk that unnerve his other classmates. He can see things no one else can. He talks to the invisible Super Star,...
At first impression, the story is very familiar: two American-born sisters of Vietnamese American immigrants – one the high-achieving 'good' daughter with her law degree, the other the 'lost' daughter with fast friends and temporary jobs that never last long. But in Bich Minh Nguyen's heart-string-pulling...
One of my dearest friends in all the world starts making gratitude lists when all the STUFF that needs to get done starts keeping her up at night ...
When 12-year-old Mahtab's father returns home with obvious signs of torture, and her grandfather is forever lost, her family knows it can no longer live in Taliban-controlled Herat, Afghanistan. Her best friend has already left without saying goodbye, hoping to find refuge somewhere in Iran....
