Despite his prestigious college degree which should have guaranteed him a bright future, Azel is unable to find meaningful work in his native Tangier, a city in northern Morocco. Mired in self-absorbed disappointment, he spends his days and nights lost in women, wine, and song,...
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...
Just to see what I might find, I went through the books I've included thus far and among almost 400 entries, I couldn't find more than a handful of titles that have an older protagonist. As the over-65 population in the U.S. has been the...
Without giving too much away, I have to say that this heartfelt debut has one of the most touching first-kiss scenes ever: up on a snowy mountain under a bright clear sky, having just taken a tumble while skiing, making snow angels and laughing ...
I'm getting on the Shamsie-bandwagon a little late ...
Just look at the energy that jumps off even these tiny thumbnail covers. What's not to love? In her debut, our spunky heroine, whom everyone calls Freckleface Strawberry, needs to "get rid of her freckles fast." She tries everything from scrubbing them off, coloring herself with...
Renée, a 54-year-old widow, serves as the overlooked concierge of a luxurious Parisian apartment building. She lives with a cat named after Tolstoy, weeps over Bonnie Butler's death in Gone With the Wind, has no patience for errant commas even as she dismisses the finer...
Welcome to a chilling debut series, which introduces readers to a strange new world in which the government knows exactly when you're going to die. As children are immunized upon entering school, a random sampling of the immunization syringes contain exploding capsules which will prove fatal on...
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...
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...
HOLY MOLY! And I was worried that things couldn't get better after Volume 001. Can we say WOW together? Even if you're not a manga fan, go get this series. I grabbed the original Tezuka Astro Boy series to read again, too, while I'm waiting for...
Every time I read a Yoko Tawada title, I almost want to go finish my almost-ABD PhD (in post-war German and Japanese literatures). Sadly, I recently got the news that my advisor/mentor passed away, so going back would be impossible without him; even though I didn't...
Young Cora is tired of just licking the spoons and not being able to really help in the kitchen. One day when her four older siblings are all out of the house, Cora sees her chance to make something special with her mother, just them...
Osamu Tezuka, the godfather of manga, introduced his beloved Tetsuwan Atom – better known in the West as Astro Boy – way back in 1951. The adorable robot boy became a worldwide phenomenon, thanks to his animated incarnation that began in 1963. Since then, somewhere, somehow,...
Here's a new perspective on the adoption experience: an older-sister-to-be marks off the days, one by one, as she and her father and grandparents make special preparations for the return of her mother who will be bringing her new sibling from Korea. Yumi Heo's illustrations...
You've gotta love this boxed set of eight little mini-comic books. As a not-so-cool high school student (the first picture you see once you slide out the contents) who didn't have much of a social life, Adrian Tomine had quite the cool other-life, inking comics...
Debut novelist Cindy Pon undoubtedly knows how to tell a story: Silver Phoenix is an exciting tale about a village teenager in ancient China who escapes a potential marriage with the over-wived town lech and goes on a great adventure through magical worlds to rescue her beloved...
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...
Walking home one day from school on the violent streets of Chicago, 14-year-old Cashay loses her beloved younger sister to a stray bullet. She would have done anything for her sister – she even purposefully flunked a grade so they could be in the same class. She...
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...
