BookDragon

Save Me a Seat by Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan [in Shelf Awareness]

20 May, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Award-winning writer Sarah Weeks (Pie; So B. It) and India-born debut author Gita Varadarajan present a poignant, comical cultural exchange in the alternating voices of two fifth-grade boys. Joe Sylvester has been living in the same New Jersey town, going to the same school and hanging...

Incarceration Nations by Baz Dreisinger [in Library Journal]

18 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, South American, Southeast Asian

“No one said this global journey would be smooth,” writes Baz Dreisinger with controlled understatement. Covering two years and nine countries in her pilgrimage to prisons worldwide, Dreisinger – a self-described “white English professor specializing in African-American cultural studies,” as well as prison educator and criminal justice...

A Morning with Grandpa by Sylvia Liu, illustrated by Christina Forshay

17 May, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Fiction, Latina/o/x

Welcome to Gong Gong and Mei Mei’s backyard where movement flows. The elderly Gong Gong “sends good energy through [his] body” with a martial art called tai chi. His feisty young granddaughter Mei Mei hears “martial art” and instantly thinks karate – “HI-YAH”s included –...

On My Own by Diane Rehm [in Library Journal]

16 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Arab American, Audio, Egyptian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Beloved NPR host Diane Rehm’s latest memoir begins with her husband John's end – depleted by Parkinson's disease, unable to "stand walk, eat, bathe, or in any way care for himself on his own, he was now ready to die." After 54 years of marriage –...

Guardians of the Louvre by Jirô Taniguchi, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian

13 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

A Japanese manga artist lies feverish in a hotel bed, having arrived in Paris after attending an international comics festival in Spain. His plans to spend five days in the City of Lights before returning to Tokyo are temporarily waylaid, haunted by “alarming thoughts … like...

You Are My Best Friend by Tatsuya Miyanishi [Tyrannosaurus series 2], translated by Mariko Shii Garbi

12 May, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Japanese, Translation

Our favorite Tyrannosaurus is back. In spite of all the kindness he revealed in You Look Yummy, his bad rep seems to have caught up with him: He’s busy being “mean and fierce, nasty and selfish.” But is he really? Just as he's raising his usual threatening ruckus,...

The First Step: How One Girl Put Segregation on Trial by Susan E. Goodman, illustrated by E.B. Lewis

11 May, by SIBookDragon in Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction

More than a full century before Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Little Rock Nine (1957), Ruby Bridges (1960), and the Civil Rights Movement, 4-year-old Sarah Roberts entered the Otis School in Boston to begin her education in 1847. Her student days ended quickly when a...

Nameless City (Book 1) by Faith Erin Hicks

06 May, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Pan-Asian, Young Adult Readers

Okay, so I'm warning you right up front: This is just the first of a trilogy. And YES, it's fabulous, stupendous FUN. Which means you're going to immediately want more. Since the first installment just hit shelves last month, who knows when the next will be...

Tokyo Digs a Garden by Jon-Erik Lappano, illustrated by Kellen Hatanaka

05 May, by SIBookDragon in Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction

One of my favorite new artists – Japanese Canadian Kellen Hatanaka – debuts his first bookish collaboration with first-time author Jon-Erik Lappano and, together, the talented duo plant some mighty magical seeds. Surrounded (choked?) by the crowded urban sprawl of an overgrown city, Tokyo and his family – including his clever and...

And After Many Days by Jowhor Ile [in Library Journal]

04 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW For the rest of his life, Ajie would be known as the last person to have seen Paul, the family’s exemplary, exceptional firstborn. On a Monday afternoon during Nigeria’s 1995 rainy season, 17-year-old Paul announces he’s visiting a friend in the next compound; he...

South Haven by Hirsh Sawhney + Author Interview [in Bookslut]

02 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

The year was 1994. Hirsh Sawhney was in junior high school when Kurt Cobain's suicide made international headlines that April. Just a few weeks later in a suburb of New Haven, Connecticut, the boy with the locker next to Sawhney's took his own life with...

Fortune Smiles: Stories! by Adam Johnson [in Library Journal]

01 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW To bring Adam Johnson’s six stories – which together won the 2015 National Book Award for fiction – to waiting ears takes a village of seasoned narrators. In “Nirvana,” Jonathan McClain deftly voices a desperate husband who uses technology to soothe his ill wife. Dominic Hoffman –...

Unidentified Suburban Object by Mike Jung [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Primrose Heights is home to only three Asian Americans: 12-year-old Chloe Cho and her parents. In spite of Chloe's growing interest in her Korean heritage, her astrophysicist mother and fish store-owner father remain consistently mum about the family's past, always hedging with excuses like "Talking...

Choose Your Days by Paula Wallace

28 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

Choose Your Days is so many good and meaningful things. But most of all, it's a gift. When Corky is born, Old Bear –bespectacled, wise, never far – appears by her side. As the "keeper of time and keys," he tells her, "Choose your days, make them...

The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet | The True Story of How They Defied Their Families and Escaped an Honor Killing by Rod Nordland [in Library Journal]

27 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Afghan, Audio, Nonfiction, Repost

Journalist Rod Nordland’s debut title began as a series of popular 2014 New York Times articles that introduced Ali and Zakia as Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet. At the time of the book’s publication, the young lovers were alive and living together, though facing a dangerously...

My Seneca Village by Marilyn Nelson

25 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Seneca Village is real. Or was real. Bordered by West 82nd and 89th streets, and between Seventh and Eighth avenues in New York City's Upper West Side, "Seneca Village was Manhattan's first significant community of African American property owners." Founded in 1825, the community – which...

Good Night, Baddies by Deborah Underwood, illustrated by Juli Kangas [in Booklist]

24 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

They might be “baddies” by day, but by evening, all the familiar villains (witches, wolves, giants, dragons, trolls, and so on) who make fairy tales so exciting shed their evil ways: “All day long they must be vile; / now, at night, they chat and...

what did you eat yesterday? (vol. 10) by Fumi Yoshinaga, translated by Jocelyne Allen

22 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

You hungry? Go eat something before you open this toothsome feast ...

Author Interview: Meredith Russo [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Meredith Russo: Sharing Secrets Not until Meredith Russo was in her mid-20s did she finally begin "living as her true self." Russo--a transgender woman born and raised in Tennessee, and now the mother of two children--has an unforgettable, timely story to tell. Russo's protagonist in her...

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In Lambertville, Tenn., where the social highlight of the week is the high school football game, new girl Amanda Hardy immediately turns heads. She's barely figured out her class schedule before Grant, acting as a mouthpiece for his buddy Parker, is asking for her phone...

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