Every mother and daughter needs to share this book. Actually, every woman should have a copy of it. Given the incredible success of Eve Ensler's revolutionary play, The Vagina Monologues, "the menstruation monologues" are the natural next step! Of course, this funny, touching, memorable collection could...
Since Lisa See's latest has been sitting high on all the best bestseller lists for many weeks, presumably many have already read the story of two sisters and their odyssey from China to LA's Chinatown. I probably should have done the same – read the...
Ruka, a star handball player, gets a little too rough and ends up kicked off the team. Frustrated, she heads to big city Tokyo where she thinks she might find the sea, and instead meets a mysterious young boy named Umi (whose name happens to...
Two years after her father is killed in a car accident, Emily moves with her mother and younger brother Navin to a faraway family home, once owned by her great-grandfather who disappeared decades ago. On the top floor of the neglected house, she finds a...
And since I was reviewing that latest Delhi Noir (see below post for Brooklyn Noir) for a San Francisco paper, I figured I ought to check out the local entry to the series, too. I'm all about procrastinating! So the Fog City version, compared to the...
Can't start without a little backstory: I was recently assigned to review Delhi Noir (link forthcoming if and when the review is published – one never makes absolute assumptions when freelancing!). Delhi is the latest in the "Akashic Noir Series" which offers specific city-based collections filled...
At 12, Paris Pan is the youngest of three in the peripatetic Pan family. Their latest address has them domiciled in teeny-tiny small town Sugar Lake, Oklahoma, where Paris has to start all over again at a new school. Unlike her older sister who has...
With a father in jail and a mother trying hard to keep her family together, San Lee's peripatetic home life is anything but zen. He's entering yet another new school as an outside eighth-grader – and moving from big town Houston to small-town Pennsylvania isn't...
In her reader's guide at book's end, Naseem Rakha explains how in 1996 she was assigned to cover Oregon's first excecution in over three decades. Once finished with the assignment, she continued to ask questions and "by far the most compelling [stories] were those told...
Using the same simple metaphor he used in his previous bestselling If the World Were a Village, educational consultant David J. Smith presents America as a village of 100 (a far less intimidating number than the 306 million we’ve become!) to help kids (and anyone...
Every Chinese New Year, Amy’s mother feels particularly homesick for her family living on the other side of the world in China. This year, a package arrives with a letter that tells the story of a remarkable stone found in Uncle Zhong’s fields, that was...
Wherever you are in the world, education is a key element to a more fulfilling life. Ruurs, herself an education specialist, celebrated the love of reading in her award-winning previous title, My Librarian Is a Camel: How Books Are Brought to Children Around the World....
Seven stories capture the disconnected restless wanderings of modern urban youth. The eponymous opening story is a moody reflection on the loneliness of every day life personified by a stranger named Mijeong [the back cover notes, "In Chinese, 'Mijeong' means 'pure beauty,'" which is true, but...
Being a so-called 'normal' teenager for hapa Pakistani Londoner Bilqis SanGreal has never been an option. With an overbearing father who happens to be the Templar Master – even if many believe he murdered his beloved wife – Billi's destiny as the newest, youngest Knight is...
Two seemingly disparate stories open this engrossing debut novel. Latha, who enjoys the smaller luxuries of life – bathing with a stolen bar of pink Lux soap – is both servant and best friend to Thara, the only child of the Vithanages with whom the young...
The Caldecott Medalist Ed Young does it again ...
If you don't think you've got the time to read this whole book, turn at least to the very end (don't expect to hear me say that again anytime soon!) and read Yunus' inspiring lecture he gave when he and his remarkable Grameen Bank together deservedly won the...
Excessive behavior has always provided seemingly unlimited literary fodder, but few writers have succeeded in creating great books from such source material. Alas, while Trinh's debut effort has a few brow-raising hairpin page-turns, her characters' bender-binges (drinking, drugs, bad relationships) soon grow too tedious to sustain a reader's interest. Eydie...
High atop a mountain lives a wealthy, wise, kind old man everyone calls Ojiisan, which means 'grandfather' in Japanese. While the rest of the village gathers to celebrate the annual rice ceremony, Ojiisan chooses to stay home, feeling something is not quite right. His prescience...
The eponymous Housekeeper's birthdate is February 20, or written out, 220. The said Professor wears a prize watch inscribed with "President's Prize No. 284." Together, 220 and 284 are amicable numbers. And with that coincidence, the Housekeeper and the Professor begin their amicable relationship ...
