Culling together every spare moment I had over a single day (amazing how much more enlightening mindless chores, endless driving, and running can be with a book stuck in your ears!), I managed to listen to all 9.5 hours of Lorraine Toussaint's honeyed narration of...
"When I was a child, our beautiful land was made ugly by racism," writes longtime author Beverley Naidoo in an introductory note. "Black, brown and white people were forced apart by apartheid (separateness) laws, and children of different colours weren't allowed to go to the same schools...
This is a book I bought twice: first to stick in my ears on long runs (chillingly read by a Korean American triumvirate of Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee, and James Kyson Lee), and when I couldn't soak in the story quickly enough, I ordered...
Oh, what a plethora of choices for accessing this swashbuckling series by the godfather of manga: you could go with the original 1960s manga series in Japanese, watch the 26-part anime from 1969 or the live-action film (available dubbed in English even!) from 2007, play the video...
For most of us in the west, our filtered news of the Middle East is, more often than not, rife with contention, violence, and tragedy. Laughter would certainly be a rare reaction to the decades-long Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and yet Palestinian author Suad Amiry manages to...
The latest from Studio Ghibli, powered by the creative genius of legendary Hayao Miyazaki, introduces brave Arrietty, her auburn tresses pulled up by a tiny orange clothespin, ready to explore and conquer the "bean" world. Released by Disney in the U.S. last month, the animated...
Flesh, a turn-of-the-20th-century debut novel set mostly in Hanoi, begins and ends with gruesome beheadings. Bearing witness to both executions is Tài, a poor teenage village boy quickly forced into manhood. In an effort to reclaim his father’s severed head and finance an auspicious burial, Tài...
Although both of these colorful books are fine standalone titles, pairing them makes for a much richer introductory experience to the boundless diversity of India: first read I is for India (part of Frances Lincoln Children's Books' peripatetic "World Alphabet" series) for a country overview, then...
The body count quickly mounts in this engrossing sequel to the thrilling faux Victorian confessional novel, The Meaning of Night. Another well-deserved WOW is in order, even more so because careful readers will undoubtedly solve several (many, even?) of the whodunit-who's-really-who clues early on, but that...
From the fabulous team who created the ever-so-delightful Spork, comes another whimsical wonder, so clever that parents just might appreciate the duo's achievement even more than their wide-eyed bundles. "One day my sister Virginia woke up feeling wolfish. She made wolf sounds and did strange things,"...
If, like me, you're in the throes of Downton Abbey withdrawal, might I highly recommend the late Michael Cox's only two novels [sadly the noted expert on the Victorian ghost story passed away two years ago at just age 60]. Yes, the British monarchs are different...
Introduced in last year's bestselling, award-winning Dream Big, Little Pig!, tenacious little Poppy did just that and proved that pigs can indeed fly ...
First things first: Don't let the book cover lead you too far astray. What you see here is actually the movie poster for legendary Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s latest international endeavor. While the film, The Flowers of War, is based on Geling Yan’s novel, originally titled...
Reading these double memoirs of a native Inuit girlhood during the 1940s in far northern Canada is a searing experience. What was done to children disguised as progress and opportunity (not to mention in the name of a Christian God) is a tragedy that is...
March 11, 2011, 14:46 Japan Standard Time: A magnitude-9.0 earthquake lasts six minutes, followed by a 50-foot tsunami that, within 15 minutes, plows inland six miles and causes meltdowns in five nuclear plants. “In one’s wildest imagination, this is beyond conceivable,” write editors Elmer Luke...
"The authors have chosen anonymity for obvious political reasons." When you know something like that about a book – that lives were willing to be risked to get a story out – how could you possibly not read it? In the case of Zahra's Paradise, I...
At 13, Beatrice is sure of her dreams: " ...
At school, 12-year-old Mimi Lu is better known as Smelly-Loo because "[h]er parents forced her to drink all sorts of smelly brews" – concocted by her herbalist doctor father – that lingered on her clothes, pigtails, skin, and even her breath. "[Y]ou are Chinese. Be...
If you missed last year's Habibi by Craig Thompson, stop everything right this second and go order it immediately. I'll wait ...
Somewhere buried in these almost 300 pages (or just over nine hours if you're listening to the husky voice of actress Daphne Rubin-Vega) is a really good book about the quinceañera – the 15th birthday celebration of a Latina which marks her maturity from little girl...
